


Offerings

by mrstrentreznor



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: F/M, Twilight AU, cop Jake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-18 06:10:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1417966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstrentreznor/pseuds/mrstrentreznor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Deputy Jacob Black gets his first murder case but the body is left in the yard of the Chief of Police, and Jake suspects that is has something to do with the Chief’s daughter, Bella, who has just moved to small town Forks. Can he stop the murders, protect her, and hide his true nature from them all? Can Bella deal with these bizarre offerings and her growing feelings for the tall deputy who is trying to keep her safe?<br/>Twilight AU, MA, violence, character death</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is largely copied from the first chapter of twilight but changed to third person pov from first, so if it sounds familiar, that is why. You have probably read it in more than a few fanfics.  
> My theory is that if Bella is Edward’s singer then, as an instinctive reaction, she should be more frightened of him than his usual human prey. At p15 when she runs into him at the office, he genuinely terrifies her and later at p23 when all the Cullens are back at the lunch table, she feels nauseous. What if it was his scent? What if she retained that fear? How would Edward react?  
> Also this Jake is older than Bella rather than younger. He looked older in the banner. She moves to Forks in her final year of school as well. And it is cop Jake. I know… right? Blame goldengirl. It was her banner and I just had to have it.  
> Voting is open in the non-canon awards as well. You have until the 9th April 2014  
> http://thenon-canonawards.blogspot.com.au/

*Banner made by Goldengirl2707

Her mother drove to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. And she was wearing her favorite shirt — sleeveless, white eyelet lace; she was wearing it as a farewell gesture. Her carry-on item was a parka.

She was on her way to Forks, Washington. A small town covered in an almost constant layer of cloud. She hadn’t been there since she was fourteen and refused to spend any more summers watching her father fish.

They went to California and Disneyland instead.

"Bella," her mom said for the thousandth time, although it was probably the last, "You don't have to do this."

Her mother looked tired and wan; her tan was fading. She had less time to sunbake and even if she’d had the time, sunbaking no longer had any attraction for her.

"I want to go," Bella lied. She'd always been a bad liar, but she'd been saying this lie so frequently lately that it sounded almost convincing now.

She was going to Forks to get away from her home. Her stepfather Phil was ill. Skin cancer. He was a minor league baseball player who had never put on enough sunscreen and then he had noticed an odd mole on the back of his neck. It was cancer and it was too close to his spinal cord. Her mother, Renee, who had always been scatterbrained and impractical, had morphed into a capable person. Maybe when the stakes were high enough she could pull it together?

She had left Charlie when Bella was a baby and managed to raise her pretty much on her own, so she can’t have been a total airhead.

Bella was in her final year of High School and the atmosphere at home was too tense and too emotional for her to concentrate on her subjects. She couldn’t study and her grades were dropping. Studying in the ugly vinyl chair-filled waiting rooms in the hospital was just not possible. Phil was fighting it; he was always a fighter, but Bella felt useless around the house.

And powerless to help.

If she went and lived with her father, her mother could put all her energy into helping Phil get better.

It was the right thing to do. One year of her life was a small price to pay for Phil.

"Don't worry about me," Bella urged. "I'll be fine. You look after Phil. I love you, Mom."

Renee hugged her tightly for a minute, and then Bella got on the plane, and her mother was gone.

She spent the four hour flight to Seattle worrying about how she and Charlie would get on. Two weeks a year she had spent with him. They barely knew each other. She had been trying to call him more often but neither of them were big on chat.

She switched planes to board a much smaller aircraft for the one hour flight to Port Angeles. She knew Charlie would pick her up in the police cruiser and then they had another one hour drive to Forks.

Charlie gave her an awkward, one-armed hug when she stumbled off the plane.

She filled him in on the latest about Phil as they walked to the car and put her stuff in the trunk.

“I enrolled you at Forks High and you start on Monday.”

She was already worrying about how she would get to school. She couldn’t walk and it would be social suicide to arrive in the police cruiser.

"I found a good car for you, really cheap," he announced after they were strapped in.

"What kind of car?" She was suspicious of the way he said ‘good car for you’ as opposed to just ‘good car.’

"Well, it's a truck actually, a Chevy."

"Where did you find it?"

"Do you remember Billy Black down at La Push?" La Push was the tiny Indian reservation on the coast.

"No."

"He used to go fishing with us during the summer," Charlie prompted.

That would explain why she didn't remember him. She did a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from her memory, like fishing.

"He's in a wheelchair now," Charlie continued when she didn't respond. "So he can't drive anymore, and he offered to sell me his truck."

"What year is it?" She could see from his change of expression that this was the question he was hoping she wouldn’t ask.

“It’s old... but good quality. They don’t build trucks like that anymore and it runs well. Little noisy, but reliable. Around here that matters.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “How cheap is cheap?”

“I already bought it as a gift actually. Call it a welcome gift.”

“Oh.” She had intended to spend her hoarded savings on some kind of vehicle. Free. She had no complaints about that. "That's really nice, Dad. Thanks. I really appreciate it."

"Well, now, you're welcome," he mumbled, embarrassed by her thanks.

She stared out of the window in silence and Charlie drove.

The scenery was beautiful, of course; she couldn't deny that. Everything was green: the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves.

But the contrast with Phoenix was stark; it looked alien to her and almost too green.

She was used to emptier skies and open landscapes.

They pulled up in front of the house. Charlie had never moved out of the little two-bedroom house that he'd bought with her mother in the early days of their marriage.

And there, parked on the street in front of the house that never changed, was her new truck. It was a faded red color, with big, rounded fenders and a bulbous cab. She loved it immediately. It was so substantial. Solid and tough. She could see herself driving it.

"Wow, Dad, I love it! Thanks!"

"I'm glad you like it," Charlie said gruffly, embarrassed again.

She had the west bedroom that faced out over the front yard. It had always been her room. The only changes were the addition of a desk and a second hand computer. She needed to keep in touch with Renee. The rocking chair from her baby days was still in the corner. It would be a nice place to sit and read.

Charlie left her alone to unpack and shower after her long day of travel. She stared out the window at the sheeting rain and allowed herself a small cry.

She sent her mom an email to say she had arrived safely. If she phoned her she’d cry at the sound of her mother’s voice and then her mother would cry. And they would both be upset and regretting her decision to leave. She wasn’t going to do that.

After dinner she went to bed but couldn’t fall asleep until after midnight and a slightly longer cry. The noise of the rain kept her awake and she was anxious about starting at a new High School. Especially one that was so small compared to what she was used to. She hadn’t had a lot of friends in an enormous school; she’d have real trouble making any in a much smaller one.

* * *

 

First day at school

Breakfast was pretty quiet. Charlie went off to work and she sat at the old square oak table in one of the three non-matching chairs and examined the small kitchen, with its dark paneled walls, bright yellow cabinets, and white linoleum floor.

Nothing had changed. Her mother had painted the cabinets eighteen years ago in an attempt to bring some sunshine into the house.

She got the impression that even after that long, her father had still not got over Renee leaving. And taking his child with her. The wall in the living room was a montage of her school photos. It made her feel awkward.

The truck started easily but she had a bit of trouble with the stick shift. She made it to school and tried to find the office. The school didn’t have fences or metal detectors as she was used to. She was pleased to see that most of the vehicles in the parking lot were older; she didn’t want to stand out. The newest car was a shiny new model Volvo.

Armed with a map and a schedule of classes, she desperately tried to memorise it all.

Thank God her first teacher didn’t make her stand and introduce herself to the class; she would have died of embarrassment. But the trig teacher insisted. She hated him on principle.

In each class there were the same faces. One or two tried to say hello and ask her how she was settling in. She lied a lot. By the time it got to lunch time, a girl with wildly curly dark hair attached herself to Bella’s side and insisted she sit with her table of friends. What was her name? Jessica?

Eric had introduced himself in English and now she met the rest of the group. Mike, Lauren, Tyler, Angela, and Ben. She only learned all their names later.

She picked at her lunch and glanced around the cafeteria. Most people were staring at her or talking about her. Fabulous.

Then she saw them.

At a table right in the corner and as far away from everyone else as they could seem to get, sat three teens. One boy was tall, lean and muscular, with honey blond hair. Next to him sat a girl so tiny she was pixie-like, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was a deep black, cropped short and it pointed in every direction.

The other boy was lanky, less bulky, with untidy, bronze-colored hair. He was more boyish than the others, who looked like they could be in college, rather than students in high school.

And yet, they were all exactly alike. Each of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students living in this sunless town. They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hair tones. They also had dark shadows under those eyes — purplish, bruise-like shadows, as if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose. Though their noses, like all their features, were straight, perfect, angular. Their clothes looked very expensive; all the name brands Bella recognised from her old school. Money and beauty? That wasn’t fair.

“Who are they?” she asked her newest friend Jessica.

Jessica glanced where she was looking and then giggled in embarrassment. She hissed quickly under her breath, "That's Edward and Alice Cullen, and Jasper Hale. They all live together with Dr. Cullen and his wife."

“They’re a family?”

“Adopted.”

The bronze haired boy glanced up at them as if he had heard them say his name.

Bella couldn’t stop staring at them. She stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful — maybe the tall blond boy, or the bronze-haired one. Even the pixie was gorgeous.

They were all looking away from each other. Not talking and no other students approached them.

“Adopted,” she repeated.

“Yeah,” Jessica said. And she continued, as if she couldn’t help herself. “Dr. Cullen is really young; only in his late twenties, I think. Mrs Cullen might be able to have children of her own one day, but she is some kind of aunt to Rosalie and Jasper Hale. She finished last year. And there was Emmett, too.”

“Five kids?”

“Yes. They seem to have a lot of money. I guess doctors get paid well.”

Bella thought they probably didn’t if they lived in Forks. “Have they always lived here?”

“No, they moved down from Alaska about three years ago.”

Three years in the small town effectively made them newcomers as well. Maybe she would have someone with something in common? Someone who hadn’t known their friends almost since before they were born.

“So if they are adopted, how come they all have the same eyes?” she asked.

“No, they don’t,” Jessica argued.

As Bella was looking at them to check, the lanky boy lifted his head and stared at her. She looked away quickly.

"Which one is the boy with the reddish brown hair?" Bella asked Jessica. She peeked a glance at him from the corner of her eye, and he was still staring at her, but not gawking like the other students had today — he had a slightly frustrated expression.

"That's Edward. He's gorgeous, of course, but don't waste your time. He doesn't date. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him." She sniffed, a clear case of sour grapes. He had obviously turned her down.

His frustrated look changed to annoyance and he glared at Bella.

She shivered in response and all the hairs on her arms stood up. She rubbed her palms down her forearms.

“Someone step on your grave?” asked Eric.

“Maybe.”

She tried not to look at the beautiful family anymore and she thought again about whether they would be friends with her. Or if she could envision being their friend? She had never been the popular girl, and she couldn’t imagine wanting to be.

She did think about them later, and try to identify what it was about them that weirded her out. Not only did they not speak to each other, but they weren’t eating anything either. The full trays in front of them were completely untouched when the tiny girl danced over and poured the contents into the trash. She was sure of it. They had just moved it around or broken things up, but she could not recall seeing any of them actually eating any of the food. How wasteful.

And how weird. Even dieting teens had to eat something and teen boys ate a lot.

The Cullens looked incredibly out of place in Forks. She’d bet money that the new model shiny Volvo belonged to them, too.

She almost groaned when she saw who her Biology lab partner was going to be; Edward Cullen. She glanced around the room while the teacher signed her slip but there were no other empty places. Angela made a sympathetic face at her. At least the teacher didn’t force her to do the intro thing. She headed to the only empty seat, but just as she passed Edward, he suddenly went rigid in his seat. He stared at her again, meeting her eyes with the strangest expression on his face — it was hostile, furious.

She almost tripped at the malevolence of that gaze.

“Sorry, she muttered. “There’s nowhere else to sit.”

He didn’t respond; in fact, he didn’t seem to be breathing. His eyes were coal black now, darker than they had been half an hour earlier. He sat rigidly on the edge of the stool, as far away from her as he could get. His face turned away from her as well.

It was epically weird. She felt as if she had the plague. No wonder Jessica had been miffed. She couldn’t imagine what he had done if Jessica had actually tried to flirt with him. There was turning people down politely and there was just plain rudeness.

The class seemed to drag on forever. She took occasional peeks at him but he never relaxed; his fist was clenched and rested on his left thigh. His sleeve was pushed up above his elbow and his arms were more muscular than she had first thought but still too pale. They looked like they were carved from translucent marble.

When the bell rang, he rose and was out the door of the classroom before anyone else had even moved.

“What a dick!” she muttered to herself, unwilling or unable to move to follow him out of the classroom.

Edward’s lack of manners made her feel like crying. Luckily, before any tears of embarrassment escaped, she was approached by a baby faced blond boy with his hair gelled into orderly spikes. “Aren’t you Isabella Swan?”

“It’s Bella,” she corrected.

“Mike,” he replied. “You met me at lunch but you probably forgot.”

“I did. Thanks. Too many names on the first day,” she apologised.

He walked her to the gym; it was the next class for them both and luckily the last of the day. Mike chattered away to her the whole way there. “What did you do to Edward Cullen? Stab him with a pencil?”

“I wish I had. What a jerk.”

“I’ve never seen him act like that before.”

“Really? He didn’t say a single word to me.”

“He’s a weird guy.” MIke smiled at her encouragingly. “If I was seated next to you, I would have talked to you.”

She chuckled and felt better for Mike’s poor attempts at flirting. “Thanks, Mike. It was like I stank or something.”

“Nah. You smell like strawberries.”

Gym was her least favorite class and her face must have given that away. The teacher let her watch as all the others played volleyball.

Afterwards, she made her way back to the office to return the paperwork. She only got lost once and as she opened the door to the office she saw that distinctive hair.

The cold air moved past her with the door open and Edward Cullen's back stiffened, and he turned slowly to glare at her with piercing, hate-filled eyes. For an instant, she felt a thrill of genuine fear, raising the hair on her arms again. The look only lasted a second, but it chilled her more than the freezing wind. He turned back to the receptionist.

"Never mind, then," he said hastily in a voice like velvet. "I can see that it's impossible. Thank you so much for your help." He sounded witheringly sarcastic. And then he turned on his heel, without another look at her, and disappeared out the door.

“What did he want?” she asked the receptionist.

“Just an issue with changing classes. Nothing for you to worry about. How was your first day, dear?”

“Fine,” she lied.

By the time she got to her truck, it was the last vehicle left in the parking lot. She drove home fighting back tears the whole way.

That night at dinner, Charlie said he had a training course that he had to go to next week. He had put it off before and now he needed to do the hours before a certain final date.

“I'll be sending myself a failure notice,” he joked.

When she didn’t respond, he asked, “You okay, Bells?”

“Just tired. First day and everything.”

“Sure.”

 

*********


	2. Chapter 2

Silly me - you’d think I had never done this before. Forgot my warning and thanks.

_Disclaimer:     the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer - this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute that, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods._

_Thanks to BanSidhe [ruadh sidhe] and Feebes86  for betaing and pre-reading and Goldengirl2707 for helping me out._

* * *

 

**Day 2**

 

The next day was better, mostly because Edward Cullen wasn’t at school at all. His two remaining siblings stared at her at lunch instead. And she felt guilty about it and didn’t know why. What did his crazy reaction have to do with her?

She chatted to Mike about the weirdness of Edward as he walked her to a class.

“He could date any girl in the school, you know?” Mike said.

“Yeah. Jessica whined about that.”

“And Lauren.” He rolled his eyes. “She was so annoyed when he burnt her off. She had a _massive_ crush on him for ages. Probably still does.”

“He was in the office yesterday,” Bella added. “I reckon he was trying to change classes; to not be in any with me.”

“I work in the office sometimes. I’ll ask for you.”

“Thanks, Mike. I just felt like it had something to do with me. But it seems strange to change classes this late in the year.”

“What are you talking about? You changed schools.”

She laughed. “Yeah. I guess I did.”

“Maybe he’s allergic to strawberries?” Mike joked.

Thankfully, Edward didn’t make an appearance all day. That afternoon she had got some cash from Charlie and intended to go grocery shopping. As she started her truck, the silver Volvo darted past her. Both occupants, Alice and Jasper, were glaring at her. She shivered again.

 

******

She asked Charlie over dinner about the Cullens.

“I expected problems with a whole family of adopted kids but I haven’t had a single issue with them.”

“They are all so beautiful,” she conceded, not that it had anything to do with how they behaved.

“You didn’t see Rosalie. She was like something you’d see in a glossy magazine. And Dr. Cullen? Some of the nurses have trouble concentrating at work, I hear.” He chuckled as he cut his steak. “Dr. Cullen could work anywhere, but his wife wanted to live in a small town.” He shrugged. “Some of the community haven’t been so welcome.”

Bella frowned. It sounded personal to him. “Like whom?”

He sighed. “Well, Billy Black, for one.”

“Really?”

“The tribe has a small medical centre, but Jake says he makes him drive him to Port Angeles to go for his diabetes check-ups.”

“Jake?”

“Billy’s son, Jake. You remember him.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You two used to build sandcastles. He’s a deputy with me, now.”

She had a vague image of a small, black haired boy with twin sisters. “The boy with black hair? I think I remember him.”

 

* * *

 

Edward didn’t come back all week and by Friday she could recognise almost everyone in the school.

She spent a quiet weekend doing homework, checking out the local (poorly stocked) library, sending her mother solicitous falsely cheery emails, and sitting in her rocking chair reading Wuthering Heights.

**Week 2**

On Monday, it was super cold and everyone in the parking lot waved to her and greeted her and she waved back; feeling like part of the school at last. It started to snow, the first of the season people told her. They were all excited about it.

She and Mike talked in English. She blitzed the pop quiz on Wuthering Heights and then they walked to the cafeteria together. Everyone was happy and laughing and tossing grungy snowballs at each other. She felt joyous, too.

Until she noticed that there were three figures at the Cullen table. Edward was back at school.

Her face looked panicked.

“Bella?” Mike asked. “What’s with you?”

“He’s back,” she whispered. “I feel sick.”

She wasn’t joking. A wave of nausea passed over her.

“You cannot skip Bio,” Mike argued, as they sat at their usual table.

“Why does she have to?” asked Jessica.

“He’ll win,” Mike said, ignoring Jessica.

Bella tried to look at the Cullen table surreptitiously. They looked as well dressed and presented as always. They were laughing and joking as Jasper was flicking snow out of his hair over Alice. Edward laughed. He looked different. The shadows under his eyes had receded and his skin looked less pale; more flushed from the snowball fight maybe.

She turned her face away quickly before they noticed her staring.

A few seconds later, Jessica giggled in her ear. "Edward Cullen is staring at you."

"He doesn't look angry, does he?"

"No," she said, sounding confused by the question. "Should he be?"

"I don't think he likes me," she confided. Still feeling queasy, she put her head down on her arm.

"The Cullens don't like anybody… well, they don't notice anybody enough to like them. But he's still staring at you."

"Stop looking at him," Bella hissed.

Jessica snickered, but she looked away.

“Oh, puleez,” Lauren said loudly. “As if he’d be interested in you.”

There was a stunned silence at the table.

“Shut up, Lauren,” Mike defended her. “You’re just jealous.”

“Of _her_?” She picked up her bag and flounced away when no one else agreed with her.

Angela looked concerned. “I can walk you to the nurses’ office.”

“I want to go home,” Bella whimpered.

“You can, after two more classes,” said Tyler.

Bella meant back to Arizona, though.

“Bio and gym,” Tyler added. “That’s all.”

Her two favorite classes. _Not_.

“Come on, Arizona,” Mike teased. “You can do it.”

“Okay. I’ll try.”

He complained all the way to building four that it was now raining and it had ruined all the snow. With relief, she noticed her table was still empty. She doodled on her notes and kept swallowing the saliva that pooled in her mouth. The stool made a distinctive scrape when he sat down.

"Hello," said a quiet, musical voice.

She glanced up quickly, stunned that he was actually speaking to her.

"My name is Edward Cullen," he continued. "I didn't have a chance to introduce myself last week. You must be Bella Swan."

He was sitting as far away as he could get on the shared lab table; his hair wet and dripping and he _still_ looked like he had just stepped out of a photo shoot. Too pretty to be real.

She blinked. “Yes, Bella.” She had been correcting people all week. So, how did he know? He hadn’t been at school. Her mind was spinning. “How did you know it was Bella?” she managed to ask.

"Oh, I think everyone knows your name. The whole town's been waiting for you to arrive."

He looked mischievous when he said that. His eyes twinkled.

Wait a second... his eyes! They were a tawny golden color now when last week they had been black. Really black.

“Did you get contacts?” she asked him.

He leaned in towards her and frowned.

Another wave of nausea hit her and she gagged.

“I’m... sorry,” she managed before she spun in her seat and threw up on the floor.

* * *

 

The teacher, Mr. Banner, was very solicitous.

Edward was standing feet away from her as if he was allergic to vomit as well as strawberries. Angela took her to the nurse’s office and apologised for not believing her earlier.

She came back after gym class, to collect her and drive her home. Her boyfriend, Ben, followed them driving Bella’s truck. He had no problems with the stick shift, she noticed.

“I don’t know what came over me,” she said.

“Just needed some fresh air,” Angela suggested. “Perhaps it was the lunch room food? You know that stuff can be inedible some days.”

“Maybe. Thanks, Ang.”

“Let me know if you skip school tomorrow. I’ll take notes for you.” Angela wrote her number next to Bella’s doodle.

She had a shower, took some aspirin and went to bed.

She woke up when Charlie’s hand brushed her hair off her forehead.

“Dad.”

“You sick?”

“I threw up in Bio.”

“I heard.”

“Small town.”

“Yep.”

******

She slept badly that night. Tossing and turning. Jumping at every small sound. She kept imagining she heard noises in her room.

But that was the first night she dreamed of Edward Cullen.

In the dream it was very dark, and what dim light there was seemed to be radiating from Edward's skin. She couldn't see his face, just his back as he walked away from her, leaving her in the blackness. No matter how fast she ran, she couldn't catch up to him; no matter how loud she called, he never turned around to look at her. Troubled, she woke in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep again for what seemed like a very long time.

Quite why she was trying to chase someone in her nightmares who unnerved her when she was awake, she didn’t get.

She looked so bad the next morning, Charlie let her stay at home. Plus it was snowing and she was still getting used to the cold.

By the time Angela dropped in with a copy of her notes for her after school, she felt fine. They chatted at the small kitchen table for a while. The big news was that Tyler had not put chains on his van and he skidded in the parking lot and crashed into someone else’s car.

“Lucky he didn’t hit anyone,” Bella said.

“Yes. He banged his head and had to get a couple of stitches. They called an ambulance and everything.”

“Dr. Cullen stitched it?”

“Of course.”

Bella said she’d see her at school tomorrow. She slept better that night.

After that, he was in her dreams nearly every night, but always on the periphery, never within reach, but every night she would chase him and never catch him. The restless sleep and the distress she felt at not being able to catch him, left her waking up feeling more exhausted. She started to look haunted. 

******

At school everyone was solicitous but her return was overshadowed by Tyler’s. He had a number of small bruises and cuts on his face. He was lapping up the attention.

She noticed at lunch that the Cullen table was reduced to one occupant and it was Edward. She wondered what had happened to the others; Alice and Jasper. Nobody else seemed to know.

Every time she looked up, Edward was staring at her. She found it unnerving that the bizarre, beautiful boy was watching her. She still couldn’t tell if he despised her or not. Lauren and Jessica found it unbelievable that he was still staring at her. They muttered together and seemed personally put out by Edward’s interest in her.

He still sat as far away as he could from her in Biology and she noticed that occasionally his fists would ball up and his back would stiffen. He didn’t try talking to her again in that soft velvety voice. That was before her attention waned and she started feeling ill again. Something in the biology lab made her feel sick.

Mr. Banner kept a worried eye on her. Every time her face went pale, Mr. Banner was watching. She thought she heard him mutter about the fume cupboard and she noticed him check the gas taps on their lab table; the ones they plugged the Bunsen burners into. He made sure the trash bin was empty and moved it closer to her lab table for her. She smiled at him wanly. He clearly didn’t want her to throw up in his classroom again.

When the bell rang, she was first to the door this time and out into the fresh air. Edward sat unmoving and watched her run away.

Wednesday, Charlie headed off to his course. It started early on Thursday morning. She’d be alone for two nights and he would be back on Friday evening. She assured him that she would be fine. He joked that he would make the patrol car drive past to check on her. At least she thought he was joking.

Thursday, Edward tried to talk to her.

“How are you settling in?” he asked. He smiled widely, flashing a set of perfect, ultra white teeth. Too white, too wide, too oddly menacing. Her instincts screamed at her.

It might have been meant to be friendly, but it just freaked her out. “Fine.” She jolted when she noticed his eyes were changing color and darkening again. “I n-need to go,” she muttered and scuttled away.

Jessica snorted in contempt and said something to Lauren that made them both laugh.

 


	3. Chapter 3

_Disclaimer:     the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer - this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute that, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods._

_Thanks to BanSidhe [ruadh sidhe] and Feebes86  for betaing and pre-reading and Goldengirl2707 for helping me out._

**Warning: character death**

The house was quiet when she got home. The rain had eased up and the snow had held off but the air was crisp and cold.

Standing in the kitchen, she got out all the stuff she needed to cook for dinner. When she went to the sink to wash her hands before preparing the food, she saw the legs out of the kitchen window, laying flat on the grass and partially obscured by the tree trunk. Someone was in the yard. She watched them for a minute or so but they didn’t move. She started to worry that they might be hurt. The forest was so close to every house in Forks and Charlie’s was no different. Maybe they were a hiker and had got this far before they collapsed?

She hurried outside and went over to check if the person was all right; calling out as she walked across the grass.

She wasn’t okay.

She was dead.

She just sat there. Her arms at her sides, her palms on top of each other in her lap and her eyes open and glassy. So obviously dead. There were gouge marks on her face but they were not bleeding. She looked as if she had been clawed by some animal, but no animal arranged bodies so neatly.

Bella swallowed down the bile that rose in her throat. She managed not to scream. She thought if she opened her mouth she might not stop screaming or she would vomit and neither was a good option right now.

She backed away; unable to take her eyes away from the obviously dead girl until she turned and ran for the house telephone.

She could hear her own voice as she phoned the reception at the police station, she sounded so cold and emotionally disengaged.

“I n-need police. There’s a body in the yard.”

“Isabella? Is that you?” Betty, the receptionist asked. They only got about three or four emergency calls a day. She would know their number off by heart. It was the Police chief’s number. Or maybe she had caller ID. Whatever. Why was she thinking about that, right now?

“It’s Bella,” she corrected automatically. She had been doing it all week.

“Honey, are you all right?”

“Please, send someone.”

“A body? What kind? A deer?”

“No. It’s a girl... she’s dead. I th-think it’s Lauren.”

There was silence for a beat.

“You’re not joking, are you?”

“No. I know it’s Lauren...I don’t know why I said I think it was her.” She clamped her mouth shut before she lost it.

“Can you stay on the line, Honey?”

“No... I just have to sit down.”

“NO, Bella... don’t hang-”

She hung up without saying anything else and then she walked slowly across and sat on one of the kitchen chairs. She had been going to cook chicken enchiladas for dinner and put the rest in the freezer for when Charlie got back. It was all out on the kitchen bench and she couldn’t make herself get up and put it away in the fridge.

The phone rang but she didn’t answer it.

She avoided looking out the window.

When the car pulled up out the front she heard it, but still couldn’t move to open the front door when she heard the knock. She did stand and moved a little closer to the window. She saw the movement when a tall man in uniform walked around the side of the house. He looked carefully around as he walked straight over to the tree where Lauren’s body was. He stood, looking down at the dead girl from about a metre or so away. He put a hand on the back of his neck and pressed his palm down as if to calm himself. Then he lifted his head and seemed to sniff deeply. She watched him crouch down and hold his hand over the grass as he crouched and shuffled forward. He looked as if he was looking for something and then he stood, brushed his hands off on his trouser leg and turned to face the house.

He saw her at the window and lifted one hand in a kind of acknowledgement that wasn’t quite a wave.

She just nodded at him.

He glanced back down at the girl, before pulling out his radio and obviously calling it in.

When he had done that, he walked over to the screen door and let himself into the house.

He was very tall in the small kitchen; probably close to six and half feet.

“I’m Deputy Black,” he introduced himself.

“Black,” she repeated woodenly. It sounded familiar somehow.

“From La Push,” he added.

She knew La Push. When she had spent summers with Charlie, they had gone out to La Push all the time to see his best friend Billy Black. She had played on the beach with Billy’s son, Jake. The deputy was clearly Native American and was not much older than her. Could he be Billy’s son? The name was the same. “Oh. Are you Jake?”

“Yes.” He looked at her carefully. “Bells? Are you all right?”

Her father called her Bells, it sounded both familiar and odd for Jake to say it. “The meat will go off,” she said.

He glanced at the counter and then walked over and put all the cold things back in the fridge. He seemed to know where everything went. He filled the kettle and put it on to boil.

“Tea or coffee?” he asked her.

“Coffee... please.”

Silence while he made it. She saw him add sugar when she didn’t take it but she said nothing.

“Did you touch her?” he asked as he placed a mug in front of her, sitting down with one of his own.

“No.”

“Not even to check if she had a pulse?”

“No. She looked dead. You know?”

“Yeah.” He pursed his lips. “I know.”

“Should you stay with her?”

“She doesn't need me.”

“Right.”

“Drink your coffee.”

She did. She grimaced at the sugar.

“It’s for the shock,” he told her.

“Is that what it is?”

“I dunno, you seem to be doing pretty well. Have you ever done this before?”

“No.”

“This may seem like a stupid question, but do you have any enemies?”

“I’ve been in town for a week; so, no.”

“You’re sure?”

She frowned at him. “Do you think this is about me?” She sounded horrified by the thought of it.

“It seems personal.”

“I met Lauren a week ago when I started at Forks high school. And I don’t think she liked me very much.”

“You’re still in High School?”

“Final year.”

“And you moved?”

“Is this an interview, Deputy Black?”

“No. Murder is a State crime. The sheriff's department handles smaller things.”

“Public nuisance, alarms going off-”

“-Vehicle theft,” he finished.

She knew. She was the chief’s daughter.

“Should I call Charlie?”

“Do you want me to do it?”

“Would you? I c-can’t...” She shook her head.

Jake stood and rang the station to get the number first. “Mobile phones are banned,” he explained as he dialed the Police Academy where the conference was being held.

“Of course, otherwise they’d all be going off with a room full of cops.”

“And senior cops,” Jake added, “it’s a train the trainer session.”

He spoke into the receiver, explaining that he needed to speak to Charlie Swan and tell him his daughter was okay.

Bella thought that he did very well with the obviously female receptionist; even charmed her a little.

“Look... I know it is against regulations, but it really is an emergency. There has been an incident at his home; a murder. I need to talk to him.”

The woman stopped arguing and clearly put him on hold. He squashed the handset down between his head and his shoulder and got out a notepad and pen. She placed his coffee on the bench near him and stood just in front of him with both hands wrapped around her own mug. She shuffled closer so that she could hear the voice on the other end of the phone line, to hear Charlie and to have him hear her if she spoke.

The next voice she heard was clearly her father’s. “This had better be good,” he barked. “Speak!”

“Chief? It’s not good, but Bella is fine.”

“Jake? Why? What’s happened?”

“A body was dumped in your yard.”

Silence for a second.

“Who’s?”

“Lauren Mallory’s.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. Bella found it and she phoned the station.”

“You’ve already called it in?”

“Yep.”

“Who's talking to her parent’s?”

“Deputy Mark went over.”

“Good. Bells?”

“She's here and wants-”

“Put her on.”

Jake handed her the phone.

Bella knew her father and she didn’t mind coming fourth on his list of priorities; he considered Lauren and her parent’s first.

“Dad?” Just knowing he was there, made her start to cry; tears ran down her cheeks.

Jake darted into the living room and came back with a box of tissues. He silently handed her three.

“Bells. God, I’m so sorry. I can’t do anything.”

“It’s Lauren.”

“I know, honey. I’ll be out of here in half an hour.”

If he came back, he would take charge and so far, the station seemed to be doing a good job. There really wasn’t anything they could do for Lauren that could not be done by the deputy, who seemed competent. And Charlie had put off this course before. He had joked about reprimanding himself. She sniffled, wiped her nose and took a breath. “No, stay. You need to do that course.”

“I can’t leave you alone. Not now.”

“Finish the course, Dad. You put it off last time. I’ll be okay. Deputy Black is here and he said this is a State matter anyway. What can you do?”

“Can Jake hear me?” he asked.

She looked the question at him.

Jake nodded.

“He stays with you. I’ll do this and leave right after they sign the completion certificate. And then I’ll start driving back.”

Jake spoke, “Leave in the morning. No point you crashing on the way here.”

“Bells?” Charlie checked.

“You want Jake to stay here with me? Overnight?”

“Yes. Someone has to stay with you at all times.”

“What? Why?”

“Put Jake back on.”

“No, he can hear you. I’m not in danger, am I? You think this is about me?” She was almost babbling in her panic. “Jake asked if I had any enemies.”

Jake pressed a hand around her arm as if to comfort her or calm her down.

Charlie sighed heavily. “Bells, you got here a week ago and no one has ever left a body in my yard before. Shit, it’s Forks, I don’t remember when the last murder we had was.”

She was silent.

“And the victim is a high school student,” he added.

“My high school,” she said woodenly.

“We’ve only got the one, but you see what I’m saying?”

Jake was watching her.

“She didn’t like me,” she added.

Charlie snorted with derision. “She didn’t like many people-”

So he did know Lauren. “But she’s in our yard.”

“Yeah. So Jake stays.”

She nodded and then realised he couldn’t see her. “Okay, Dad. Thanks.”

“I love you, kiddo. Can you put Jake back on?”

“Love you, too, Dad.”

She handed him the phone and went to blow her nose. She wasn’t really listening as they talked about jurisdiction and boundaries. She sat back down and stared without focus at a point on the floor.

Jake hung up then crouched down in front of her.

She blinked.

“Sorry,” he said. “I touched your arm before.”

“That’s okay.”

“I have to go outside.”

She looked panicked at the thought.

“You can come with me if you want,” he added.

She felt so adrift. “Jake?”

“Yeah, Bells?”

“Can I hold your hand?” She wasn’t sure where that question came from.

He smiled at her. “Sure, you can.”

He held a hand out to her and she took it. He felt incredibly warm, and given he was more than a foot taller than her, his hand was proportionate and she felt like a child clinging to it as they walked outside.

Deputy Steve was standing in the yard. He looked pretty green around the gills. “State Police are on their way.”

“Good.”

“You okay, Bells?” the deputy asked her. Clearly Charlie called her Bells at the station, too.

She nodded and felt like hiding behind Jake.

“How long will she have to wait?” Bella asked.

“We can’t move her,” Jake said. “Or cover her.”

“I know... I just...”

“Jake has his own skills,” Steve said proudly.

She looked up at him for an explanation.

“Tracking. My father taught me before he lost the use of his legs.”

So that was what he had been doing when he was crouched down. “I saw you,” she said.

“Find anything?” Steve asked.

“Not really, he walked in that way from the woods.” He pointed towards the trees. “Her hair is caught on the branch at about waist height.”

How did he know it was a male? Did he assume that from the sex of the victim? Or did he know something else? Bella tried to ask him but she couldn’t make the words come out.

“There’s just forest in back of there for some distance,” said Steve. “Long way to carry her before you reach a road.”

Her. They still called her a her.

“Yeah, that seemed odd. Can you tell them when they get here?”

“Sure. What about the Chief?”

“He’ll be back Friday night or Saturday morning. I called him. He asked me to stay here with his daughter.”

“Okay. Makes sense.” Steve glanced down at their joined hands. “I’ll wait out the front,” he suggested.

Jake squeezed her hand and then let it go.

She waited until Steve had gone around the side of the house. “You and Charlie both think this has something to do with me,” she ventured. “Why?”

He looked at her for a second before he nodded a little. “She’s not hidden or buried in the forest.”

“Or up a mountain where we’d never find her.”

“Right. She’s here, where you couldn’t miss seeing her from the kitchen and she looks... arranged. No... displayed. Her arms are placed like that, palms up in her lap-”

“Supplication,” she interrupted.

“Pardon?”

“When people hold their hands like that they are asking for something; an offering, or a coin, or taking confession.” She hated the way she sounded so disconnected; she knew this girl but logical, unemotional things were coming out of her mouth and she couldn’t stop them.

“Oh, I see.” He studied the body. “And see her hair?”

She tried to look at it dispassionately. “It’s neat.”

“But not combed. Maybe he did it with his fingers; tucked part behind her ear.”

She had to agree with that. “She loved her hair.”

“How do you know that?”

“She played with it all the time. Touched it, did the hair toss thing.”

“Hair toss?”

“You know...” She tried to fling her hair seductively, the way Lauren did... or used to.

Jake was looking down at her with an expression she couldn’t decipher.

“Ah... sorry,” she apologised.

She scuttled back to the house to go to the bathroom to avoid him.

He watched her go.


	4. Chapter 4

Offerings chapter 4

_Disclaimer:     the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer - this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute that, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods._

_Thanks to BanSidhe [ruadh sidhe] and Feebes86  for betaing and pre-reading and Goldengirl2707 for helping me out._

**Author’s note: one thing I forgot to say, this was a pre-made banner. So I have written the story to fit with it. Bella looked scared to me, her arms wound around her body and the crime scene tape meant there had to be a crime and a cop… he he.**

Jake rang his father while she was upstairs. “Dad? Got a death in Forks.”

“Vampire?”

“Maybe.”

“Who is the victim?”

“High school student... but she’s laid out in Charlie’s yard.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“It smells like a Cullen... I think it might be Edward.”

Billy was silent for a while. “Forks is their territory according to the treaty.”

“I know and I technically breach the treaty by even working here, and they have never complained, but it’s weird...”

“Phasing into wolf form will definitely break it, but how is it weird?”

“She wasn’t bitten. She’s had a precise blow to the back of the head. No blood spilt. She’s just dead.”

“Not _bitten_?”

“Nope. I can’t see a bite mark on her and I can’t smell venom but I can smell him near the body.”

“They were at high school together.”

“No, it’s more than that. He’s been in the yard.”

“And the treaty only specifies ‘bite a human’. Doesn’t say anything about just murdering them,” Billy suggested.

“The intent is there, but I have no proof, Dad.”

“Is the case yours?”

“No. Murder is a State crime.”

“I’ll talk to the tribal council.”

“Ask Sam to patrol closer to Forks.

“Can we risk it? Closer to the Cullens.”

“Get him to check if all the Cullens are at home, too. Charlie asked me to stay and guard Bella so I can’t come back to the rez tonight and I might not be able to phase in. But I want someone out there.”

“Sure, son.”

“Will you be okay tonight?”

“Yes, thanks, Jake.”

“I need to go check on Bella.”

“How is she?”

“Pretty.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Shit.”

Billy laughed and hung up.

* * *

 

 

Jake went back inside to be with Bella.

“I rang my father,” he explained when she came back into the room. “He needs to know I am not coming home tonight so that he can get someone to help him get into bed.”

“Wheelchair,” she said. Her father had told her that Billy sold his truck as he could no longer drive it.

“Yeah. He can’t even drive now. You’ve got his truck.”

“Yes. Charlie said he bought it from Billy cheap.”

He nodded.

“You didn’t want it?” she asked him.

He made a face. “It’s a good truck but a little loud and a little slow for me.”

“I wish you were there to help me the first day. I kangaroo hopped a few times with the stick shift.”

“It’ll cope being left in second gear.”

“I kind of worked that out; but I am way better now.”

“I can look at it for you if you’d like.”

“You’re a mechanic, too? Is there anything you can’t do?”

“Plenty.” He passed her the coffee mug. “Drink up,” he instructed.

She did. She wondered that she felt so comfortable with him after such a traumatic event.

He sipped his own drink and she studied him. He was as handsome as Edward but in a different way; he was all darkness and color. Dark eyes set above the planes of his cheekbones, dark glossy hair and his russet colored skin. His size pushed him from beautiful into the seriously impressive category.

Edward was pale and almost translucent. He was on her mind as he had been in her dreams. She shuddered suddenly.

“You okay?”

“Sorry. It’s just... school.”

Jake’s dark eyes watched her. “It’ll be difficult.”

 

The state police arrived about then. CSI staff took photos and examined the yard. One officer said that she had to interview her. Jake stayed with her.

 

She told the female officer everything she could remember and answered all her questions as well as she could.

Jake didn’t mention anything about his theory that it was about her, rather than Charlie, so she didn’t, either.

“Do you have some ID?” the woman asked.

“It’s upstairs in my schoolbag.”

“I’ll get it.” Jake hurried up to get it.

“My license is still an Arizona one. I only moved here recently.”

“I see.”

Jake handed her the wallet. He squeezed her hand as he did it. She opened it and passed it to the officer so that she could see the photo ID.

“Was Lauren well liked, Miss Swan?”

“I-I think so. I’ve been at the school for two weeks. I know she was very popular.”

“Tell me about her.”

“She is... was... really beautiful, but she'd get jealous if she thought someone was interested in her guy.”

“So she knew she was beautiful?”

“I guess so.”

“I wonder if that was why her face was scratched?” the officer asked.

Jake answered, “Maybe. But other than that, she’d been laid out like a gift.”

Bella shuddered. “I’m sorry.”

Jake put his arm around her shoulder. “No, I am. We shouldn’t be talking like this in front of you.”

“It kind of helps to think there might be a reason, even if it is one that I don’t comprehend, yet.”

“You will get through this,” the police officer said.

She might, but other people didn’t. “Poor Lauren.”

“Was she dating anyone?”

Bella shook her head. “I don’t know... I think she had a crush on E-” She stopped talking.

Jake gave her a quizzical look.

_Edward. The guy who terrified her. Epically weird Edward. Lauren had a crush on Edward._

She looked at Jake and he gave a tiny imperceptible head shake. Or at least she thought he did.

“-Eric,” she finished after a pause that was too long. “Or was it Tyler?” She fiddled with her hands. “You’d need to ask someone else who has been at the school longer.”

The officer thanked her and went off to report to the others.

Standing, Bella moved agitatedly; back and forth.

“You want another coffee?’ Jake asked.

“No,” she snapped.

“Okay then.”

She leaned down and whispered at him, “Why did you shake your head?”

“Later.”

At least he didn’t deny it. “Tell me,” she insisted.

“Do you trust me?” he asked her.

She looked at him. She kind of did. Even though she had known him for an hour or two at the most; she did trust him. And she wasn’t sure why that was.

He raised his eyebrows.

“Fine,” she snapped. When she stood upright, she noticed they had started moving the body. She gasped.

Jake stood quickly and from behind her, he could see it also. She turned and buried her face in his chest. After a moment when he seemed surprised, his arms lifted and he hugged her.

They stood there for some time, until Jake said, “It’s safe now.”

She wiped at her eyes. “Sorry,” she said. “I am always apologising around you.”

“It’s okay.”

“Tell me... now.”

He sighed.

“Please, Jake. There is something really weird going on and I know you think it concerns me and you didn’t say that to the State cops.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Is this avoidance?”

“I’m hungry and I would rather have this discussion on a full stomach.”

“I don’t want to cook. I think Charlie has Pacific Pizza on speed dial.”

“Awesome.” He rang in an order.

Sitting in silence, her arms folded and her brain running around in circles, she kept silent. So did Jake. He closed his eyes, legs stretched out in front of him and he looked as if he took a power nap.

When the knock at the door came Bella went to answer it. She looked at the delivery guy in disbelief. “Three pizzas?”

Jake reached around her to pay.

“Oh, hey, Jake,” said the guy.

“Thanks, Will.”

Bella looked between them. “Is this a frequent thing?’

Will looked confused. “Yeah, Jake’s one of our biggest customers.”

“I guess he is.”

She let him carry the pizzas to the kitchen and eat half of one before she said, “Start talking.”

He finished the piece he had in his hand and then licked his fingers. “Right,” he said. “Where to start?”

He was talking to himself and she knew that but she said, “I was going to say Edward not Eric.”

He nodded. “I know you were.”

“How did you know that?”

He ignored the question and asked one of his own. “You’ve met him?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he’s impressive?”

She looked at him. “Honestly?”

“Yeah, go on, tell me.” He waved his hand in the air. “Oooh. He’s so rich and so beautiful--”

“He makes me vomit.”

“What?” He looked incredulous. “Vomit?”

“I almost threw up on his shoes.”

Jake snorted. “Seriously?”

“He weirds me out, he stares at me, he makes the hairs on my arms stand up and I feel scared and sick when he is around.”

He stood, leaned across the table and kissed her with an exaggerated mwah sound.

“Hey?” she complained.

“My turn to apologise,” he said. “You are the only girl who has ever said that. Tell me why he affects you like that,” he said as he helped himself to more pizza.

“I don’t know why no one else notices, but his eyes change color and his skin is too white; he looks like a piece of rock. He cannot be real.”

Jake was shaking his head. “So he’s not your friend?”

“Good god, no. The closest he is, is my lab partner.”

“So why has he been in your house?” he asked quietly.

She stood suddenly. “What?” She almost panicked.

“Bells... he’s been in your bedroom.”

She put both hands over her mouth.

“Hey... hey. Don’t waste the pizza.”

“M-my room? How can you know that?”

He looked very serious. “I can smell him.”

“What? Jake, you aren’t making sense.”

“You know how he makes you feel sick? To me he smells like rotten candy.”

“Yuck.”

“Exactly.”

“Shit! So _he_ hurt Lauren?”

“I think so.”

“Why didn’t you tell the cops?”

“And say what? I can scent suspects? They will just lock me up.”

She mumbled something that might have been an agreement and sat back down. “You went straight to Lauren’s body. Did you smell it?”

“Yeah.”

“What are we going to do?” she asked him.

“You are not going to do anything. You are going to stay in this house where I can keep an eye on you.”

He was onto the second pizza. She knew guys ate a lot but two pizzas seemed unreasonable. She watched him eat for a little while; he wasn’t even slowing down.

“What?” he asked her when he noticed her scrutiny.

“So what is he?”

“He’s a creep. You already know that.”

“You’re lying.” Her eyes narrowed. “There is way more to it than that.”

He shrugged eloquently.

Food. Jake ate two whole pizzas and the Cullens ate nothing. “They don’t eat,” she said.

She got a look for that. “You are a lot like your father, you know.”

“I am?” She noticed that he hadn’t answered the question. Maybe it wasn’t a question. Maybe she was right.

“Yeah.”

“Neither of us talk much,” she conceded.

Jake gave her a weak smile. “You’re doing a good job so far.”

“I’m not nearly so chatty at school.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“No, really. Here in Forks is the first time I have been popular.”

“At school?”

“Yes.”

She looked at Jake; tall and good looking with muscles on his muscles and she could not imagine him being anything except popular. “I bet you were popular at school.”

He chuckled. “At the tiny little rez school?”

“Do you deny it?”

“No. I _am_ the son of the chief.”

“My point, exactly.”

She pulled pieces of topping off the pizza without eating them. “Should I go to school tomorrow?”

“Up to you. Nobody would object if you didn’t go.”

“He might be there.” Her voice sounded small and terrified.

“And I’ll be here,” he said.

“So I will be, too.” She reached across the table and put her hand on top of his arm. “Thank you.”

They sat in silence for a little while. The second pizza disappeared.

She yawned. “I need to sleep... but-”

“You don’t want to sleep in your room.”

“No.”

Jake stood and crushed the empty box in his hands. “I’ll chuck these in the trash and then walk you upstairs.”

She snorted. “That sounds so weird.”

He grinned at her.

She was waiting at the bottom of the stairs when he came back inside.

She led the way. “Did you notice the scent when you got my wallet?”

“Yeah.”

She paused in the doorway, unable to enter her own room. “I hate this,” she muttered.

Jake touched her gently, both hands on her shoulders. He gave her the tiniest push. “Get what you need and then you can go back downstairs.”

She spun to face him. “It’s my room!”

“I know.”

“Where has he been? Tell me!”

“You’re sure?”

She nodded emphatically.

They kind of did a dance in the doorway to let him past her.

“Right...” He moved around the room, with his head cocked to the side. “He came in the window, up that tree I think... and he sat in this chair.”

“That’s my rocking chair. From when I was a baby.” She shuddered.

Jake looked worried.

“I feel as if I should burn it.”

“Only way to get rid of it. He spent some time in the chair as if-” He stopped talking suddenly.

She made a leap of understanding. “He watched me sleep,” Bella said. “That is so... gross.”

“He’s crossed a line.”

“From creeper to murderer if you are right.”

“Did you feel ill at home? Here?”

She tried to think about it. “Yes! The first night after I threw up at school, I felt awful and I had-” She stopped talking now.

“Bells?”

She stared at the floor.

Jake stepped over closer to her. “Tell me.”

He had his hand out; palm up. Beseeching just like Lauren’s body.

She reached out and took his hand. He squeezed gently. A comfort to her.

“I d-dreamt about him.”

“Edward?”

“Yes. I was chasing him.” She looked up at Jake’s face. “Why do I dream that? Chase him? I don’t want to chase him! Why on earth is that my nightmare? That he leaves me and that I run after him like some crazy, obsessed person. That isn’t me.”

“It’s the venom,” said Jake. “Exposure over time changes your behavior.”

She blinked. “Venom?”

“Shit. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s the same thing every night... has he been in here every night?” Her voice was rising as she panicked.

“Bells!” He said it forcefully enough to derail her.

She took a deep breath and then felt sick again. “I need to get out of this room.”

She stood at the top of the stairs and told Jake what to fetch for her and where it was. She didn’t say clean panties; that felt a little too much to ask him to do for her.

When he exited his face was serious.

“Pyjamas?” she asked as she saw what he had in his hands.

He shook his head.

“He touched my pyjamas?” she demanded.

A nod.

She darted quickly into the room, pulled a drawer open in the pine dresser, grabbed clean panties and a large t-shirt and dashed out again. She didn’t wait at the top of the stairs and then she was two steps down when the wave of nausea hit her.

She fell.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Offerings chapter 5

_Disclaimer:     the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer - this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute that, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods._

_Thanks to BanSidhe [ruadh sidhe] and Feebes86  for betaing and pre-reading and Goldengirl2707 for helping me out._

* * *

 

She fell.

.

..

...

She didn’t black out; more of a brown out, so she knew she was falling and couldn’t catch herself. It was worse somehow. She could see the stairs coming up to meet her and she wasn’t able to put her hands up to protect her face. They just would not move.

Jake caught her.

Strong warm arms grabbed her, lifted her down the rest of the stairs, swung her around without hitting her head on the wall and then he carried her to the living room where he put her down carefully on the sofa.

He crouched down next to her with a sheepish look on his face. “I probably shouldn’t have done that, either.”

She wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that. “You’d let me fall on my face?”

“No... I guess that’s the problem.”

There was silence for a beat before she asked, “Jake, what are you?” He was impossibly fast and strong and had an extreme sense of smell. She had some theories.

He bit his lip before glancing up to meet her puzzled eyes.

“A shape shifter; a wolf.”

“That wasn’t one of my theories,” she said. It never occurred to her to doubt his word. He was clearly not normal.

“You had theories?” he checked.

She ignored that. “So what is... _he_?”

His face twisted.

“Just tell me,” she begged.

He lifted her legs and sat down on the sofa with her legs across his lap. “He’s a vampire.”

“A vampire?” Perhaps in a world where shape shifter wolves existed, vampires existed too.

He waited for her to process that and when she waved her hand at him to continue, he told her everything. As pack leader he made the decision to tell her. She was linked to the vampire somehow and she already sensed his wrongness. Plus, he thought that she needed to know how dangerous Edward really was.

It took some time to tell. In parts his voice took on a sing song recitative quality as if he was telling an old tale he had heard many times. He kept touching her legs; little pats and brushes and she didn’t mind at all.

When he finally finished, she wasn’t quite sure what to say. He was looking at her as if her response would really matter to him.

“I believe you,” she said. Now all the evidence she had noticed and her odd feelings when around the pale, freakishly beautiful creatures made sense. She felt better for knowing the truth.

“Thank you,” he said simply.

It was pretty dark by then and she yawned.

“You should get some sleep,” he encouraged.

“I don’t think I will be able to sleep.” But when she came back after getting changed into her large t-shirt and brushing her teeth, she was out in minutes.

Jake covered her with a quilt and wondered what it was about her that brought Edward Cullen to her house.

 

* * *

 

Jake was stretched out on the floor in the living room. Too tall to fit on Charlie’s recliner and Bella was curled up on the sofa. She twitched and shifted as if she was having another nightmare. He went to get her an extra blanket in case she was cold.

He thought he would sneak out and phase to see if the pack were close. He’d take the risk of phasing inside the treaty limits.

She woke when the back door closed.

Blinking, she looked around and noticed Jake was gone. She thought perhaps he had just gone to the bathroom or to check on the house or something but when he didn’t come back immediately, she started to panic.

Wrapping the quilt around her shoulders she went looking for him. She headed for the kitchen, first, thinking that if he came back she could pretend she just got up for a drink of water.

That was when she noticed the pile of clothes just inside the back door. She stared at it, unable to work out why it was there.

Then she saw movement in the yard. The sky was clear for once and the moon lit up the yard.

It was Jake.

He was walking across the grass near the yellow tape that flickered in the light breeze. She knew the tape was yellow but in the moonlight it looked gray. He was only wearing a pair of boxers and nothing else. His bare feet pressed solidly against the ground.

She stared at him and forgot to run back to the sofa. The boxers hung low on his hips as if he had just put them on quickly. It was too little clothing for the weather but he seemed unaffected by the cold.

He had the best body she had ever seen. Wide shoulders and slim hips. He had that perfect V; the muscles on his hips trending down to his groin and she was fairly certain his six pack was at least an eight. She looked away quickly before she started staring at the heavy bulge in his boxers.

He glanced up at the house as if he had heard her but she was frozen and couldn't move away from the window. Maybe his eyesight was as good as his scent?

He opened the back door and stepped into the house almost silently.

She still couldn’t move and it was too late to do it now.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

“What... were you doing?”

“Just checking something.”

She glanced at the kitchen clock. Three am.

“You were dreaming,” he said. “Another nightmare?”

“Yes.” Whatever he had been doing he wasn’t going to tell her. “I’ve got the chills.”

“Him again.” It was a statement. “He hasn’t been in the house.” It was a statement.

“You’re not cold?”

“No.” He looked at her with his large dark eyes. Dark but a different kind of dark to the black that Edward’s eyes had been. Warmer. “Here... feel.”

He stood right in front of her and she reached out her hand and pressed her palm against his stomach.

He wasn’t just warm; he felt hot to the touch.

He made a small sigh noise when she did it and she unconsciously copied him.

So hot. She wanted to be hot.

“Jake?” she asked, staring at his chest.

“Bells?”

She looked up at him. “Kiss me?”

He still looked serious and she was terrified he might say no. But he didn’t answer, just leaned down and pressed his lips against hers. She closed her eyes and kissed him back; lifting up on tiptoes to try and get closer to him. One hand slid across his silky smooth skin and pressed against his back; the other reached for his hair.

His lips moved against hers and one of his hands held her firmly at the back of the head; pushing her onto him. She shifted her head and opened her mouth and then her world became heat. Heated tongue in her mouth, heated palm against her neck and that scorching body pressed up against her.

She made a small noise in her throat; straining to hold him. The quilt dropped to the floor.

He just hoisted her under the armpits and sat her on the kitchen counter.

She lifted her legs and wrapped them around his waist. Both her arms were around his neck; still straining to get him even closer. His hands slid under her shirt and across her skin; holding her against him.

He pulled away from her and laid open mouthed kisses down her neck. She was panting.

“Christ, Bells,” he said. “We have to stop.”

She actually groaned. But he was right.

He pressed his forehead against hers.

“I know,” she complained. “The timing is all wrong.”

“And-” a kiss “-you’re my boss’s daughter.” Another kiss.

They forgot for a second and kept kissing before pulling apart again.

“Come on,” he said. He lifted her with one arm and carried her back to the sofa. “You need to sleep.”

“I don’t think I can now.”

“Just lie down and try.”

She clung to him like a limpet when he tried to put her down. He chuckled.

“Fine,” he said.

He lay on the sofa and she lay on top of him.

“You’re super comfortable,” she told him.

“Stop talking.”

“Aren’t you young for a deputy?” she asked.

He sighed. She obviously wasn’t going to sleep. “I started as a cadet. They take them from twelve. It was Charlie’s idea, actually, to get more kids involved in community affairs.”

“Sounds like him.” She glanced at him. “So...?”

“I'm twenty now. Started when I was nineteen and a half.”

“I’m guessing that half was important.”

“Yeah.”

He had signed up the first day that he legally could and had worked as cadet before then; that showed her that he had ambition.

“I’ll be eighteen in September.”

“I know.”

“You checked my ID.”

“Go to sleep.”

Eventually she did fall asleep.

Jake lay awake, his ears straining for sounds around the house. He had no idea what Cullen would do next, but he had money on it that he would be back to the house, hopefully not with another weird gift for Bella. He held her tighter protectively before sliding out from under her gently and going to check her room and make sure all the windows were locked. He had already done it three times, but it paid to be careful.

He watched her for a little while before deciding that was as creepy as Cullen and covered her back up with the quilt and left her to sleep alone.

* * *

When Bella woke, Jake was in the shower.

In the morning, in the clear light of day, they were both a little awkward with each other.

She dug around in the fridge for bacon and eggs; Charlie’s favorite meal and one he cooked often for dinner.

Jake’s car was still parked out the front of the house. He had a bag with a change of clothes in the trunk and in casual clothes he reminded her less of being a deputy and so closely linked to her father.

She kept glancing at the spot on the counter where he had sat her while they kissed. She’d bite her lip each time she did it and Jake couldn’t help but notice. He assumed she had regrets.

The first person that wandered into the yard nearly had Jake jumping out of his skin. High school students with flowers in their hands. The police tape marked where the body had been and they placed their flowers down before hurrying away.

“Why do people do that?” Bella asked. “It’s for them, more than for Lauren.”

“That’s why they do it. They feel helpless. They wish they could have done something but they don’t know what.”

He poured more coffee and watched the mourners carefully.

“Candles, now,” said Bella. “At least it is not raining today.”

They continued to watch.

Bella sighed. “They don’t come to the house.”

“No,” said Jake. “That’s too much for them.” He sipped from the mug. “Plus, they don’t know who killed her.”

They might think it was _her_. She was new to town and then someone was dead. It was logical.

“I killed her,” she whispered.

“No! You did not!”

“She was just being a normal teenage girl. Why does she have to be dead because of that?”

Jake couldn’t answer her.

“She had a crush!” Bella blinked quickly and muttered something about the bathroom as she ran for the stairs.

Jake’s hands clenched on the edge of the kitchen bench so hard that it creaked ominously and his knuckles went white. He took a deep breath. Shifted his shoulders and stood tall.

“No, crushes shouldn’t kill people and I will be damned if his crush on you will hurt you. Treaty or no fucking treaty.”

He started making calls to the station to see if the investigation had progressed overnight, to his father to see what the tribal council wanted to do and to his pack.


	6. Chapter 6

**Offerings chapter 6**

_Disclaimer:     the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer - this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute that, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods._

_Thanks to BanSidhe [ruadh sidhe] and Feebes86  for betaing and pre-reading and Goldengirl2707 for helping me out._

Bella, unnerved by the incidents of that morning was uneasy and irritable. She couldn’t read, her mind wouldn’t settle down enough to comprehend the words on the page. Lying on the couch, she read the same page three times before she gave up and almost threw the book away.

“Do I have to stay here?” she demanded.

Jake eyed her off. “Yes.”

“I can’t go out to La Push?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Ah...” He looked trapped. How could he explain the politics that left him her only close quarter guard? “Charlie said you had to stay here.”

Her eyes narrowed at him. “Do you always do what Charlie says?”

“Yeah. He’s my boss.”

“I thought you were the pack leader.”

“What would you like to do?” He interrupted her quickly before she said go to the rez again, adding, “Other than leave the house?”

She shut her mouth with a snap.

“Bells?”

“I-I don’t know.”

“It’s not your fault.”

She stood suddenly. “You keep saying that ...but it is...”

He approached her; slowly and carefully. His hands held low as if she was going to startle and run.

“It makes me so angry,” she muttered.

“I know.”

“I want to punch something.”

“Punch me,” he offered.

“What? No!”

“You can’t hurt me; you’re a marshmallow.”

“I am not a marshmallow.”

“Come on... give it your best shot.”

She turned to face him. He was making the ‘bring it’ sign at her with his fingers. She balled up her fist, as if she really meant to punch him. Her arm was level with his gut. Staring at his chest, she put the other hand up on his shoulder, as she drew her fist back.

Close together they were so aware of each other.

She could feel how warm he was and a memory flash of the midnight kiss made her blush.

He could smell her hair; she filled his nostrils with a scent that was uniquely hers, and it became more pronounced when she blushed.

He inhaled her and she knew it; she recoiled.

He managed not to try to grab her.

She stood; her fist still clenched and she glared at him. “Did you just smell me?”

“Yes.”

Her face changed from angry to horrified.

He had to fix this. “I know that seems weird and I know that the last person to do that to you is probably killing people and I’m sorry but-” he paused “-it’s my wolf.”

“Your... wolf?”

“He likes you.”

“And you don’t?”

“No, I like you, too and oh, shit.” He ran his hand through his hair. He hadn’t been this nervous around a woman for years. “You smell good to him.”

“I... ah... what?”

“Sorry.”

She didn’t speak.

“He’s never done this before,” Jake added.

“Right.”

“I mean not that I do everything he says... but he can make his opinion known... and I should just stop talking.”

She nodded quickly. “Maybe.”

“Don’t you want to hit me, now?”

“No.” Short and sharp.

“You’re sure?”

She had her arms folded and she was staring at the floor. Her whole body looked tight and tense. “I’m sorry I asked you to kiss me,” she said.

“I’m not.”

She glanced up at him. “It’s all too fast and I met you yesterday and now this is happening... and-” Her lip quivered.

He shuffled closer to her, whispering in a low voice, “I want to kiss you again...  I want to touch you... I want to feel you with all of my senses... Christ, Bells... you felt me last night. I want the taste of you to be in my mouth... and the scent of you to be all over my body.” It took everything he had not to hold her in his arms.

She sucked in a breath. “Oh.”

“If that is okay with you.”

“That sounds... good... yeah... good.” She touched his chest with her hand and brushed her fingertips gently over his shirt. “But if we start-”

“-we are not going to stop,” Jake finished.

“Yeah.” She said it with a breathy sigh that made him close his eyes.

She knew what he meant. He was pleased that she would be right there with him. “You want me just as badly. I can smell it.”

“You smell really good to me, too,” she confessed.

He nearly said something about other people making her nauseous but didn’t. “So, ... we need to do something to get our minds off it and when this is over, when we are both ready for the next step-”

“We can take it together.”

“Yeah,” he breathed at her.

“Enchiladas,” she said.

He blinked. “Pardon?”

“I need to cook them.”

“Sure, sure.” He grinned at her. “I wondered where that came from.”

“Can you cook?”

“I can. Taught myself from cookbooks. My mother died when I was little.”

“I knew that, I had just forgotten.”

Neither of them moved.

His fingers traced down the flesh of her other arm and found her hand. They tangled together for a second before their fingers interlaced. It felt right to her. Comfortable and familiar even though it couldn’t be.

“You are so hot,” she commented.

He chuckled.

“You know what I mean.”

They were inching closer together.

“No!” she said; mostly to herself, but he took a step back.

She turned and holding his hand behind her she walked to the kitchen.

He followed. He would have followed her anywhere.

 

* * *

 

She took a deep breath and started to pull the ingredients from the fridge again. “How did you know where everything went?” she asked Jake as he leaned against the cabinets.

“I’ve been here before...and the smell.”

“It must be useful, sometimes.”

“Sometimes.”

“So you know where the onions are?”

“Sure do.”

They spent a relaxed half hour making a baking dish of enchiladas. Bella usually didn’t cook with other people in the kitchen but Jake didn’t get in her way; in fact, he often seemed to anticipate what she needed and passed it to her before she could ask for it.

It was nice.

“Herbs?”

“Some old dried stuff here in the rack. What did you need?’

“Parsley and oregano. What about garlic?”

“None fresh but he has granules.”

“That’ll do.”

As she turned, she knocked the cook’s knife off the cutting board.

Jake’s hand stopped it before it hit her foot but it was falling blade first and now he had a cut on his hand. A cut that was bleeding.

She blustered her apologies for being so klutzy.

“It’s okay. I heal, you don’t.”

“You knew that?”

He nodded as he ran the cut under the tap water.

She wanted to help so she got a clean dish towel and wrapped it around his hand. He gently peeled it away again, explaining, “They get stuck in the wound.”

“What? How?”

“Wolves heal super quick. It’s awesome. Watch.”

As she held his hand with both of hers and a dish towel, she watched; not sure what she was supposed to be seeing. Like a time lapse film, the bleeding stopped, the wound went a darker color on the edges and puffed up a little and then it started to knit back together.

She felt faint.

“You okay?” he asked.

“It’s blood... makes me feel woozy.”

“Okay.”

When all that was left was a fading mark, she brushed a finger over the top of it. His hand felt heavy and super heated like all of Jake. She looked up at his face and pressed speculatively against the cut.

“Does that hurt?”

“No.” He sounded closer than she expected him to be. He was almost looming over her but his eyes were closed and he looked to be breathing deep and evenly. He was clearly sniffing her ... again.

“Your wolf needs to go to puppy school,” she said.

He chuckled. “Sorry.”

“That healing was amazing.” She rubbed over the now invisible cut once more to satisfy herself. “It’s completely gone. You can have your hand back, now.”

“I don’t need it; it’s fine with you.”

Flustered by that answer, she protested, “Don’t be silly - I can’t hold your hand for the rest of your life.”

And then she heard what she had said, the way _he_ would have heard it; it sounded like a marriage proposal.

He was grinning at her. “I don’t see why we can’t try it,” he said.

“I knew you were going to say something like that.”

“I thought it was romantic and it’s proof that we are already on the same wavelength.”

Her wavelength didn’t include long term relationships after meeting a guy yesterday, even if she did jump his bones at midnight, but she had to concede it was romantic. “It _was_ romantic, very,” she whispered. But she took a small step back and cleared her throat. “Ahem... so you heal fast?” Quick change of subject was required.

“All the pack do.”

She asked some more questions about the pack as they finished making the dish together. He answered everything she asked.

“Is it a secret? The pack?”

“Yes.”

“So why tell me?”

“You’ll be around for a while,” he said with complete confidence.

She smiled and to hide it, she turned quickly. The crime scene tape in the yard was an unfortunate reminder of what happened to other people because of her presence in this town.

She took a halting breath and then spoke low and quickly, “Maybe I should just leave Forks and go somewhere - get drunk and talk about vampires and werewolves until they lock me in an insane asylum or the vampires come to take me out for breaking secrets.”

Jake shook his head. “First of all, I’d have to arrest you for underage drinking, so you’d be locked up where I could look after you.”

“I suppose... how would you find me?”

“I could sniff you out.”

“Now, that just sounds silly.”

“I could,” he argued. His voice dropped, “I could find you anywhere.”

Given her vampire admirer, that should have sounded off-putting but it didn’t; it sounded more like a promise than a threat and she found it comforting. “I’ll never get lost again,” she said.

“Nope.” He hesitated. “Although it kind of sounded like fun.”

She laughed.

One moment they were standing there looking at each other and the next they were kissing again.

This time it was Jake who stopped, sniffed and said, “Shit! He’s back.”

“Who?” she asked stupidly.

“Edward.”

And then she heard his voice from the yard. “Isabella?”

“Oh, my god,” Bella whimpered. “He’s got Jessica.”

“She’s dead. No heartbeat,” Jake said.

“Has he even noticed?” Bella asked.

“He’s insane.”

“Isabella, my love?” His velvet voice called to her.

Bella glanced towards the back door.

Jake shook his head. “No.”

“I have to. I must stop this.”

“No!”

“Jake, you won’t stop me.” She put her hand up to his face. “You won’t hurt me.”

“But he will.”

“So come with me. Outside.” She tried to tell him something with her eyes.

Outside. Where he had room to phase.

“Think of the treaty,” Edward reminded him.

Jake resisted the urge to stop her. If she was inside the house, she would be safer, but she was like her father; she wouldn’t let another person die for her. Jake was a protector; both as a cop and a wolf and if she went outside, he was going with her.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Offerings chapter 7**

_Disclaimer: the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer - this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute that, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods._

_Thanks to BanSidhe [ruadh sidhe] and Feebes86 for betaing and pre-reading and Goldengirl2707 for helping me out._

_**Warning: character death… man, I am always killing people lately…** _

* * *

Edward waited, beautifully dressed as always, but he looked more dishevelled today. His artfully arranged messy hair was truly messy; it had small twigs in it and his trousers had mud stains below the knees. He stood in the centre of the yard. His skin sparkled where the sun hit it.

"What on earth...?" Bella asked.

"It's the sun. The vampires hide their true nature from us. The cloud cover stops it," Jake explained. "The Cullens take off every sunny school day."

"We go hiking with our father." Edward laughed and it sounded high and hysterical.

"You mean hunting," Jake corrected.

"Careful, dog. Don't annoy me." He glared at Jake. "Why is HE here?" he demanded of her.

"He works with my father. You know that." She lied as badly as she always did but Edward didn't seem to notice.

The bronze-haired boy had his elbow around the neck of Jessica Stanley. She was clearly dead; her body hanging like a weight from his pale arm. His thin veneer of humanity had cracked wide open. Besides the sparkle of the sun on his marble skin, no normal human man could have dragged the weight of the girl's body with one arm around her throat. And he didn't drag her; he flipped her about like a rag doll. Her wild curly hair moving with her.

There was nothing they could do for her now, but Bella tried. "Please, put Jessica down."

The vampire looked confused. "But I haven't arranged her for you, yet."

"I apologise that the surprise has been spoiled."

He dropped the limp body to the grass and brushed off his sleeve.

"Lauren was rude to me," she suggested in an attempt to understand why he was doing this.

"I heard that awful comment she made. She hated you. She was so jealous. You should have heard her thoughts about you. Did you know that? I can read thoughts?" He parodied her high pitched voice, " ...  _so disgusting. You'd think she was famous or something... Even Edward Cullen staring. And Jessica flaunting her new best friend. What a joke."_

"She was jealous," Bella said.

"Vitriol spewed from that girl's thoughts."

"Edward," Bella said. "You're not well."

"I feel perfectly fine, thank you for asking, Isabella dear."

"Where's Alice and Jasper?" she tried.

Jake was desperately trying to think of a plan without actually thinking about the plan.

"Don't even try it, dog," the vampire warned.

"What is he talking about?" Bella asked Jake.

"He can read my mind as well."

"You didn't tell me that."

"Not yours, though," Edward said.

"You can't read my mind?"

"No. You are the quintessential closed book to me."

"I see." Now his frustrated looks and glares made sense. "Does that make me special?" She tried to get Edward to explain why he was doing this.

"You were already special."

"I was? How?"

"You are my il tua cantante."

"Is that Italian?"

"Yes. Each vampire may meet a person whose blood sings only to them. You are my singer."

"Singer," she repeated.

"They are exceptionally rare and in eighty years as a vampire, I had never met mine. Until you walked into Biology and sat next to me."

"That must have been hard for you," she said.

"It was like fire burning in my throat and up my veins."

"Did it hurt?" she asked.

"Yes, it was extremely painful. I was almost overcome by the desire to taste you."

Jake twitched.

She remembered Edward's odd reaction in the Biology lab. "You clenched your fists."

"I crushed part of the lab table to fragments and scattered them before you even sat down."

She blinked. They must move so fast; she hadn't noticed a thing at the time and she didn't think he was lying.

"But I wanted to do so much more," he crooned. "I mapped it all out in my head. I was in the middle of the room and I decided to take the right side of the room first. I estimated that I could snap four or five necks per second and once I moved to the left side of the room, they would all be dead within five seconds." He smiled at her. "Leaving you for last, of course. I did not want your delectable blood to cool while they were dying."**

It took her a second to realise that he was describing murdering the whole class to get to her. "But you didn't do it," Bella suggested. She looked especially pale. "You tried to change classes to get away from me." She had run into him at the office and he had genuinely terrified her.

"Yes."

"You had more control then. What has changed?"

"Alice is away," said Jake quietly.

"Shut up, dog!"

Jake shut up. Bella was doing better without him and he half hoped the vampire might forget about him.

"I didn't meet Alice," she said, drawing the attention back to her.

"She was eager to be your friend. Alice can see possible variations of the future and in one, you and I were together and in love, and she was your best friend."

Bella was suddenly very glad that Edward couldn't read her mind. What a nightmare. One where she vomited when she got too close to them? How was that going to work?

"We were beautiful. We were vampires." He said it with a note of ecstasy in his voice.

"You can see the vision in her head," she guessed.

"Yes."

"And she can see when you might... slip up?"

"Yes. She could see that Tyler would bleed in the parking lot. In front of Jasper! Imagine that? He is the newest member of our vegetarian family and his hold is a little tenuous. I do admire his strategy. He had the entire event planned out with military precision. If Alice hadn't foreseen that ... well... it would not have been good. So they had to go away."

That explained why the Cullen table only had one occupant. So the family tried hard not to kill people. Edward's actions were very out of character.

"Did you -" what was the word he had used? "-taste Lauren?"

His face screwed up in distaste. "Oh, no. I would not soil myself with blood from such as her. And my eyes would change to red. I could not hide that from my family."

So she wasn't imagining it when she had noticed that his eyes changed color. "You scratched her face."

"She is not so pretty now."

"And Jessica? What did she do?"

"She parroted anything vitriol girl said."

"She said you wouldn't be interested in me."

His face lit up as if he thought that Bella finally understood him. His eyes were almost completely black. "Yes! How rude."

"When clearly ... you  _are_." If dumping dead bodies at her feet was categorised as interest.

"Indeed."

"You made Lauren apologise." The way her hands were arranged; it was Bella's apology that she was asking for.

"You are so smart; so intelligent."

"Why don't you put Jessica over there?" Bella pointed away from the temporary shrine to Lauren, towards another nearby tree.

Jake gave her a look as if she was totally insane as well.

"Perfect. Opposite her. I love symmetry." Edward lifted the body by one arm and dragged it over to the tree to start arranging her for his loved one.

"You are the perfect mate for me," Edward said happily.

* * *

Jake's wolf was almost clawing out his insides. If he moved away from her he would have room to phase but he could not move away from Bella, he wanted to stay glued to her side. It was taking everything he had not to phase. Shuffling through the options, Jake's brain was imagining and rejecting strategies. None worked simply because he was one wolf and the vampire could read his mind. No element of surprise there. The pack was not nearby; the treaty prohibited them to be on Forks land in wolf form and they could not patrol so close to the houses without being seen. They had also not known that Edward was so insane as to come to the house in broad daylight; exposing his sparkling skin to all. Not that he was attacking the house; just killing schoolgirls.

And then Edward said Bella was his mate.

Oh, Hell no.

Jake's wolf went wild.

His eyes flicked to Bella. She hadn't moved. She looked shocked and pale. He heard her heart rate and it was high but not erratic.

The pain of exposure to her blood must have pushed the vampire over the edge. Any semblance of humanity was gone. He was now completely insane.

"I AM NOT INSANE!" Edward screeched at a volume that hurt Jake's ears.

"Shit." Stupid mind reading.

"She's my SINGER. Don't you understand? She is made for me!"

His singer? Made for him? Tell that to the girl that had jumped him last night. Tell that to the girl who kissed him that afternoon. Jake wished that he hadn't stopped her. That instead of peeling Bella from his half naked body, that he had given her what she so obviously desired in the middle of the night.

_**Him.** _

Not Edward. Not the guy who made her ill.

Knowing that Bella was the key; knowing that she was so important to Edward, Jake started with the real truth of her asking him to kiss her. She asked. She wanted him. He filled his mind with an image of that passionate kiss. His hands up inside her shirt, touching her bare skin. And then he allowed his mind to head off into every fantasy image of what he could do to Bella. He could do it because she wanted him. Multiple images of her passed across his mind. Her naked body in every single sexual position that he could envisage. His cock buried deep inside her. Her ass up in the air. Her legs above her head.

The enraged vampire spun around to berate Jake. He screeched with rage, "NO! She's mine!"

Jake stripped her in his mind knowing that Edward could see it. He imagined every degrading act. Her - Edward's precious singer - under his huge body screaming Jake's name as he fucked her. As he ruined her for others.

And then, in a final act of desecration, he pulled out and came all over her face.

He despoiled her.

"She's not like that!" Venom spittle sprayed from Edward's mouth. "She would never do that!"

And Bella ran.

Momentarily distracted by the movement, Edward took his eyes off Jake.

Jake didn't think. He just let the wolf loose.

Fuck the treaty. Fuck the secrecy.

The giant wolf crashed into the vampire; attacking him with teeth and claws. Hands like talons raked at his fur in return. Each tearing at the other at a speed too fast to see. They rolled across the yard and hit a tree with a resounding crash.

Bella ran towards the shrine. Edward couldn't read her mind. Jake had said something about burning her rocking chair to get rid of vampire scent. She prayed that she had guessed right. She picked up a lit candle and flung it at the rolling figures.

The movement and the air caused the flame to go out.

She tried another one.

Some of the candles were in glass containers, others were on tinfoil plates. She burned her hands picking them up but but she didn't stop throwing them.

The rolling figures hit the tree and stopped for a beat.

One candle in a glass container hit Edward on the back of the shoulder. Venom dripped like silver blood from a gash on the vampire's back where the wolf had clamped it's teeth around his shoulder and then torn a chunk of his marble flesh away. The drip trail ignited.

There was a loud whump noise as the vampire caught fire.

The wolf yelped and rolled across the ground away from him. The smell of burning hair was everywhere and another more perfumed scent she didn't recognise.

"Jake!" she screamed.

She ran towards the wounded animal.

The burning vampire stopped at her scream. It took a few steps towards her and held his arms out to her beseechingly.

She hurried to stand between him and the wolf.

She had to make the vampire go away and leave them alone. "I hate you!" She roared at Edward. "You make me sick. You killed people. I could NEVER love you."

"Bella?" he pleaded. "I love you."

She was breathing heavily and now understood the incense smell came from the figure in front of her. He didn't try to run. Still trying to convince her of his love.

"You watched me sleep," she said. "You broke into my house. You can read minds and you don't appreciate how wrong that is?"

"But-"

"You are a murderer and you made me responsible for their deaths. That is not love."

"I-I'm ... I have stained your soul."

She looked at him. The enormity of what he had done was starting to get though. "I will tell your family you are sorry."

"They should already know."

Alice's visions should have shown this. He wasn't fighting them; he wasn't trying to hurt her or Jake and she appreciated that but she still wasn't going to apologise or forgive him. Instead, she gave him all that she could, "Goodbye, Edward."

He dropped to his knees. His head lowered and he didn't make a sound as the flames consumed him and the purple smoke rose into the air.

She stood there and she watched him burn.

After a little while she felt a hand on her shoulder. Jake, human again, was standing behind her. He put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her back away from the fire before he hugged her against him. He leaned against her. She felt him kiss the top of her head.

She put her hands down to touch his thighs and she felt bare skin and realised he was naked. His clothes were in tatters all over the yard.

A tall, well-muscled Native American man came sprinting out of the forest. Bella guessed he was another member of the wolf pack.

"What the fuck?" he asked, glancing at the purple smoke and the body beyond it.

"Cullen."

"Oh, shit! He got Jessica?"

"Yeah. We need to clean up before we call the State Cops again. Don't touch her."

Bella patted Jake's thigh. Ouch. That hurt.

"Oh, Paul, this is Bells."

Paul had already started collecting the small pieces of Jake's clothing. "Hey."

"I'll get you a trash bag," she suggested.

She turned and faced Jake. "Are you seriously hurt?"

"Bells, your hands," Jake said as he grabbed them.

He was covered in scratches and a larger wound scrape that had already stopped bleeding.

A warning howl went up.

"Shit. Incoming," said Jake. Paul hurried over to flank Jake with Bella in between them.

"Incoming what?" Bella asked but the question was answered for her as a blurred streak of movement became two vampires. The male was young, he was blond and he was handsomer than any movie star she had ever seen. He was pale, though, and tired-looking, with circles under his eyes. This had to be Edward's father.

"Carlisle," said Jake, confirming her suspicions. "Esme." He was still nude but he stood there with dignity; unembarrassed.

The small, slender woman with him had the same pale, beautiful features as the rest of her constructed family. With her heart-shaped face and the billows of soft, caramel-colored hair, she reminded Bella of a star from the silent-movie era. She made a noise, like a strangled sob when she saw the still smouldering remains.

"Edward," Jake confirmed.

The woman embraced her husband. They both looked distraught.

Carlisle looked at the neatly arranged body of Jessica. "He did this?"

Jake frowned. "Alice didn't tell you?"

"She did... but... there was a delay. Further, she had some issues seeing clearly... a blackness..."

"She didn't believe it," Bella said.

He made a small head nod. "And I did not believe it, either. We are sometimes too reliant upon her visions. She sees so many different possibilities."

They could have stopped this. Bella's jaw tightened.

Carlisle noticed. "Edward was my first child. And he has had moments of... weakness; he executed murderers at one stage but even recently he imagined-"

"Killing my whole biology class to get to me," Bella said, her voice low and angry. "He told me."

"But he didn't do it," the woman pleaded. "He left school... he went away."

Bella said nothing. The corpse of Jessica spoke for her.

"We will need to leave the area," Carlisle said.

"Yes," Jake confirmed. "We cannot tell the authorities that he is dead as there is no way to explain it adequately. You do not want a legal investigation into your family."

"I apologise for my son, Isabella," Carlisle said. "If there is anything I can do to make it up to you." He noticed Bella's burns. "May I help with your hands?"

"No." Jake almost growled it.

Pressing her burnt hands up against her chest, Bella didn't want him to touch her, either. She didn't care if he was a doctor at the hospital.

"We had hoped you would become part of our family," Esme said.

Bella bit her lip. Her stomach roiled. She shook her head silently and hunched closer to Jake before she remembered a promise that she had made. "I told him that I would tell you he was sorry. He said something about staining my soul."

"I understand," Carlisle said. "It was a matter that concerned him."

"If we go, Edward will be blamed," his mother said.

"He did  _this_ ," Jake said in a tone of disbelief. "The treaty is broken. You have twenty four hours."

"That should be sufficient. It is, perhaps, more than we deserve. Thank you, Jacob." Carlisle pulled his wife away. She started to cry as they went and then they disappeared in another blur of movement.

"Well, they seemed like nice people," Bella said sarcastically.

"I could not let him touch you," Jake said. "Sorry about answering for you."

"No. I agree. But you heal so fast."

"And you don't. Any ideas how we can explain all this?"

She shook her head. "I've got nothing."

"Come on," he said as Jake helped her back inside.

* * *

**AN: taken from Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer


	8. Chapter 8

**Offerings chapter 8**

_Disclaimer:     the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer - this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute that, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods._

_Thanks to BanSidhe [ruadh sidhe] and Feebes86  for betaing and pre-reading and Goldengirl2707 for helping me out._

 

More pack members arrived and helped Paul clean up the yard. They placed the candles back and relit them. Bella gave them some more from the house. They would be melted down by the time the authorities arrived. Any broken glass was removed. The ashes scattered and the burn mark covered with forest ground litter.  Bella noticed how carefully the pack trod in the yard so as not to leave tracks.

“Any tracks they leave will be confused with all the ones from the people paying their respects,” Jake suggested. “It is a messy scene already and now dozens of people have walked through it.”

“Did they know her?”

“Everyone knows each other around here.”

“True. At least he arranged her, so she matches the first body.” She sniffed. “Poor Jessica. She might have been a better friend to me if she had got the chance to prove it.”

“She didn’t deserve that,” Jake said.

“Okay ...are we ready?” Paul looked over the yard.

“I’ll call it in.”

The pack scattered.

* * *

 

The story was accepted. Bella said she burnt her hands on a casserole dish. Chicken enchiladas in fact. It was cooling on the kitchen counter. Jake’s scratches had almost healed and the ones that hadn’t were covered by clothes. Jake overheard the police note the scorch marks on the ground but they couldn’t see how they were relevant.

When the same officer asked them what _exactly_ they were doing to miss seeing the murderer place the body in the yard, Jake stared stoically at the wall and Bella blushed so hard that the officer lowered her head and smiled at her notepad. “I see,” she said. “You will have to talk to Chief Swan,” she suggested benignly.

“Believe me, I know,” Jake said.

Bella stared at her fingers. It started as a small shiver. She reached out to pick up a pen and saw her own hand twitch. A panicked glance in Jake’s direction and he was already moving towards her.

“J-Jake?” she muttered before the tears started.

He scooped her up and cradled her in his arms. “You’re okay,” he told her.

The truth was, that she had just understood that it was _her_ actions that had killed Edward. Sure, he had done awful things and Jake would probably have killed him anyway, but not before he got hurt.

And she could never tell anyone.

It was a secret; perhaps the biggest secret of her life.

But as Edward had said, he _had_ darkened her soul, but not in the way he meant. It wasn’t the deaths of the girls that had spoiled her, it was _his_ death. She thought of herself as a murderer as much as he had been.

“You’re okay,” Jake repeated.

“But they’re not!” she wailed. And she was including Edward in that grouping without actually saying it.

The officer watched them as if she was waiting for them to say something incriminating.

Thankfully, Charlie chose that moment to arrive home from his conference, and Bella was so distracted that she didn’t even see him with her face buried in Jake’s shoulder. “What now?” he asked, with a glance at the female police officer. “I heard the radio.”

“Jessica Stanley is dead.”

“Hell, no. Those two are a major loss for the town.”

“Dad?” She sniffed. She looked a complete mess; her hair dishevelled, her eyes red, her nose dripping and she was trying to wipe the tears away without using the palms of her hands. She was still sitting on Jake.

“What did you do to your hands?” Charlie asked.

“I lifted out the enchiladas without using the oven mitts.”

Charlie blinked. “Again?” he asked.

“She has done that before?” the police officer asked.

“Yeah. When she lived with her mother. Wouldn’t just drop the dish on the floor, but carried it to the countertop.”

“It was expensive steak,” Bella argued.

Jake noticed that the officer made a note of that.

“Chicken isn’t expensive, kiddo.” With a glance at the two witnesses, Charlie asked to be introduced to the officer in charge and in minutes, Jake and Bella were alone.

They sat in silence, until Charlie came back. He sat, without speaking until all the vehicles out the front of his house had driven away; one of them taking the body of Jessica.

“Jake can go home now,” Charlie said.

Convulsively clinging to him, Bella felt like crying again. “Noooo. I don’t want him to.”

“I can stay,” he said.

Bella started to wonder why she was so eager for Jake to stay around? Why didn’t she want to get off his lap, even in front of her father? What was happening to her?

“You don’t have to go to school tomorrow. It’ll be shut down anyways,” Charlie suggested in what was supposed to sound like conciliation. “I will go run you a bath and after that, we can bandage your hands.”

“He’s suspicious,” she whispered to Jake.

“He is.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Play it by ear.” He kissed her forehead. “You have that bath. Call out if you need help.”

“You’ll hear me?”

“Yeah.”

“My room?”

“The stuff you wore last night is still downstairs, and it’s safe now.”

She nodded doubtfully.

 

* * *

 

Charlie Swan stalked back and forth in his own kitchen. Jake sat in the kitchen chair and felt as if he was being interrogated down at the station. “Do you want to explain what you were doing to miss seeing the perp lay that dead girl out in my yard?”

Jake took a deep breath. “I saw him.”

“What?” Charlie looked astonished.

“Jessica was already dead. There was nothing we could do for her.”

“You saw him?”

“And so did Bella.”

“That explains a few things,” Charlie said, “Who was it?”

“Edward Cullen.”

The chief made an abrupt hand gesture; he looked as if he needed to shoot something but hung onto his belt instead. “Cullen,” he repeated. “Why didn’t you arrest him?”

“Maybe you should talk to my father.”

“I’m not talking to your father, I’m asking _YOU_.”

Jake sat stiffly; his hands balled into fists on the top of his thighs. He hated doing this but he had to protect Bella. He also knew Charlie; if he lied, Charlie would not let him near his daughter and Jake did not want that to cause problems for them all later. He respected Charlie Swan and he did not want to jeopardise that either. He was so screwed.

“Jake?”

“The Cullens will be leaving town.”

“Why?”

“I told them to.”

“ _You_ did?”

“Edward’s actions breached a treaty that the Cullens made with the Quileute in 1936.”

“A treaty? To do what?”

“Not to hunt on our land.”

“Forks isn’t your land.”

“I know, but there was another line about harming people.”

Charlie just looked at him. “Which Cullens?” he asked perceptively.

Jake was reminded that he had told Bella that she was like her father. Charlie was not a fool. “The same ones that live here now.”

“And you know this how?”

“Ephraim Black signed the treaty.” He looked up at his bosses’ face. “And Carlisle, but Edward, Emmett, Rose and Esme were witnesses. Alice and Jasper joined them later. You can ask my father.”

“You’re seriously telling me that Carlisle Cullen is over a hundred years old?”

“He’s closer to _four_ hundred years old.”

Charlie sat down suddenly. “Will Edward be going with them?”

“No.”

“ _Hunt_ ,” he repeated. “What ...d-did they hunt?” he asked in a voice much quieter than it had been.

“The Cullens hunt animals, but others of their kind hunt people.”

“Their kind...”

“Vampires. The tribe calls them cold ones.”

“I have heard that story.” Charlie stood, walked to the sink, turned and walked to the fridge, opened it, closed it again without taking anything out and then sat back down in the chair he had just vacated. “I didn’t think va-” He stopped; unable to say the word, “-they could come out in the daytime.”

“The books have it wrong.”

“What did it have to do with Bells?”

“Her... scent. Edward was obsessed with her.”

“She smelled good?”

Jake nodded.

Charlie shook his head. “You know it half amazes me that that is not even the weirdest thing I have ever heard someone say. Once, I had a guy who said a piece of cheese told him to hit a stranger in the head with an axe.”

Jake waited patiently.

Huffing out a breath, Charlie asked, “And the girls?”

“They were nasty to Bella or jealous of her.”

“And for that, they died.”

“He was insane.”

“He left them here like kills from a cat.” He smacked the table with his palm. “I KNEW it had something to do with her.”

“Yeah... he was so proud of himself. Could not understand why she was upset.”

“So...” Charlie started. “Where is Edward if he’s not leaving with his family?”

Jake’s eyes flicked to the stairs.

Without speaking, Charlie looked a question at him.

Bells, he mouthed.

A nod.

“Come and join us, kiddo.”

After muttering a swear word she sidled around the door frame.

Charlie pulled out a chair and indicated that she sit in it. After a longing glance at Jake, she did.

Hunched over with her sleeves pulled down and held in her hands, she looked withdrawn and almost frightened. She had clearly been brave enough to enter her room and get other clothes.

“I’ll repeat the question - where is Edward?”

“I killed him,” Bella confessed.

Charlie gave her a very serious look. “ _You_ did?” A glance at Jake as if he thought that Jake was more likely to have done it. Jake nodded.

“Burnt him,” Bella added, holding up her hands.

A nod. “Where’s the body?”

“Ash,” said Bella.

“Gone,” said Jake.

“Huh?” said Charlie.

“They burn away to nothing... just ash,” Jake expanded.

“You’ve done this before.” It was not a question.

A curt nod from Jake.

Charlie rubbed his moustache the way he always did when he was thinking. “No body... so I can’t charge you two even if you did confess.”

The two in question stayed silent. Jake didn’t even object to being accused of confessing.

“And no perp, so the other murders won’t be solved either. As long as we make sure they don’t arrest somebody else for it.” A pause. “We’ve done all we can for the victims.” He eyed off the two who were studiously avoiding looking at each other.

“The only good thing I can think of is the unsolved murders are not on _my_ books.” Silence. “I suppose, also it won’t be happening again.”

“It _won’t_ be happening again, the treaty is gone,” Jake growled. “Stupid politics meant he got too close to Bella.”

“Politics?”

“The tribal council are old men.”

“Slow to act,” Charlie confirmed. “So will I have a visit from Carlisle?”  
“I doubt it.”

Emitting a deep sigh, Charlie went to get the first aid kit to bandage Bella’s hands.

When he got back she was curled up on Jake’s lap.

* * *

 

Bandaging her hands didn’t take long and then they ate some of the meal she had cooked. Jake deposited her on a chair to eat.

Charlie kept looking at them both as if he didn’t recognise them. With new eyes.

“So what are you, Jake? In a world where vampires exist? ... oh, wait... I think I remember the stories.... the big wave and the wolves? The tribe was descended from wolves.”

Jake nodded.

“Who else?”

“I can’t say.”

“Huh. I can guess that one, too,” Charlie said. He started to count on his fingers. “Sam Uley, Jared Cameron, Paul Lahote, Embry Call, Quil Junior... damn, that boy is huge... and Seth and Leah Clearwater.” He looked triumphant. “Am I right?”

A cautious nod. “How?” Jake asked.

“You reckon I didn’t notice when a bunch of rez kids grew a foot inside a week? You grew out of your cadet uniform too fast.”

“I always said you were not a fool, Chief.”

“And I have noticed your extra skills. I work with you every day.”

“Did you know that the Cullens were... different?” Bella asked.

“I knew there was something off about them, but I would never have guessed a vampire. I made a joke once that Carlisle didn’t sleep. He worked so many hours at the hospital that he did the work of two doctors. Was I right about that?”

“Not sleeping?” Jake checked. “Yeah, they don’t sleep.”

“And they don’t change, right?”

A nod.

Charlie sighed. “Those poor kids. Doomed to never grow up.”

“Seventeen forever,” said Bella.

“Carlisle was changed in his early twenties,” Jake added.

“He looks twenty five,” said Bella.

“And he always has,” Jake said. “He doesn't get a day older.”

“Wait a second... you met him?” Charlie asked Bella.

“He and Esme arrived... just after-” She stopped.

“Wow. So they couldn’t stop him?”

“No,” said Jake dripping with anger.

“And this?” Charlie asked with a wave between them. “It is kind of... sudden.”

“Too sudden to have actually had the time to talk about it,” Jake said.

“I’m over eighteen and I can date whoever I want,” Bella objected.

“So, it’s dating now?” Charlie asked.

“Yes,” Bella insisted.

“Are you dating my daughter, Jake?”

“Ah... I sure hope so... yes?” he tacked the question on the end at the look on her face. “If she will have me,” he added.

She smiled at him.

“But you have to sleep here,” Charlie insisted.

The new color that had been in her cheeks with their discussion vanished. The hunched, frightened girl was back.

“I can’t sleep in my room,” she whispered.

Charlie changed from teasing the young lovers to eerily still. He studied his daughter. “What... did... he... do?”

Jake answered for her, “He was in her room while she was asleep... he touched her things...”

“Being near him made me feel ill.”

“You were sick in the mornings,” Charlie noted.

She nodded.

Blinking slowly, Charlie announced, “He’s damn lucky he’s already dead.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Offerings chapter 9**

_Disclaimer: the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer - this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute that, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods._

_Thanks to BanSidhe [ruadh sidhe] and Feebes86 for betaing and pre-reading and Goldengirl2707 for helping me out._

**AN: sorry about the hiccup in postings. We had a dose of gastro through the family. I am way tired of washing bedding. So now back to Jake and Bells.**

* * *

Charlie spoke to his deputy, "Should you call your father, Jake?"

"I can do that later."

"Do it now."

"Oh... okay." Jake hesitated; clearly not confident of leaving Bella alone. She nodded, a small, almost imperceptible movement but he took it and left, heading out the front door, avoiding the crime scene and leaving Bella alone with her father.

Charlie pulled his chair over closer to hers. He leaned forward and reached out to pat the back of her arm where it lay on top of the table.

"Talk to me, Bells."

"He..." Her voice was so low Charlie had to strain to hear it. He leaned closer to her. She spoke haltingly with many gaps and pauses. "He said ... Alice could see the future ... that in one future... I was with him... and that I was... a v-vampire." She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. "I am so tired of crying."

"I know, kiddo."

"I'd just be...  _dead_... like he was."

"Pretty glad you didn't do that. I only just got you back."

"Yeah. I haven't called Mom."

"It will be on the news. There is no way she will miss a mention of Forks, Washington."

"No."

"So... Jake?" her father asked.

"You like him."

"I do." He paused. "Do you?"

Her father's eyes looked concerned.

"You think it is just some stress reaction. That it is too fast."

"Yes, plus, no offense, I've seen the way people react to him."

Women would flirt with him; she had no doubt. Maybe men, too. He was such an impressive figure and he was so handsome. "What do the other guys in the station think of him?"

"They let him deal with all the witnesses; he's brilliant at that."

Idly, she wondered how much of that was due to his wolf senses. "From the time I first met him, he has been nothing but polite," Bella said with a glance at her father. "It's me that keeps asking for more."

An embarrassed cough from Charlie. "I see." He had seen it; she had leapt onto Jake's lap as soon as she could.

"There is something there," she tried to explain. "He said his wolf liked me."

"His wolf? You've met his wolf?"

"Ah... kind of." Hard to explain that the wolf had literally torn chunks out of Edward in front of her.

"So... that matters?"

She shrugged. "I don't know... I've never felt like this before and he said the wolf had never liked anyone before."

"Uh-huh."

"I need to ask him what he meant."

"He'll tell you; if there's one thing that kid has always been - it's honest."

She knew that. He had told her everything, when she asked.

"So the wolf matters?" Charlie checked.

"Huh? What are you talking about?"

"The others... I dunno... what do I call them? In the pack?"

She shrugged. "Yeah?"

"If the wolf matters, that might explain Sam and Leah's break-up."

He had recited those names as both being wolves.

"Sam and Leah were together?"

"Not any more."

"And now they are both wolves?"

Jake spoke from the doorway, "Yes. It makes it difficult. Leah is very-" he stepped inside the room, "- bitter."

Charlie noticed the way Bella's face lit up when she heard Jake. In seconds she was out of her chair and holding herself against him. One of his hands slid under her hair and held her face against him, the other pressed against her back. He looked at her father over her head. "If it is okay with you guys, may I stay here the night?"

"Here?" Charlie asked.

"Please?" Bella muttered. "We won't do anything." She held up her hands as her argument. "I can't stay in that room. We'll sleep in the living room like we did last night."

"Just for tonight," Charlie tried to argue. "Tomorrow we bleach it or repaint or whatever you need me to do. You have to stay here to finish school." All the desperate arguments of a father confronted by young love.

* * *

It took some time for the police to release the bodies to their families.

The investigation was stalled. As Esme had feared, the abrupt departure of the Cullen family was noted; as was the fact that Edward was not with them. The small town almost exploded with rumours and gossip.

The only thing people were happy about was that there were no more deaths.

Charlie knew that a fingerprint match had been made with Edward. They took reference prints from his piano. But the prints also matched some very old murders and the police had great trouble making any sense out of the computer records that related to the Cullens. They just seemed to go too far back.

Jessica's mother Mrs Stanley had been the source of all gossip in the town and now she was silent. Everyone else did it for her. She was heard to make comments about how bad behaviour was to be expected with a whole family of adopted teenagers. Not that the police could find any legal evidence of the adoptions. The gossip tree went crazy with that information.

The fact that there were no more deaths took the attention away from Bella and laid it squarely at the Cullens' feet, at least as far as Forks was concerned. It didn't make the national press for more than a day.

School was difficult. Bella had trouble writing until her hands healed. People were wary of her for a few days and then they went the other way and kept asking her about the whole thing until either Angela or Mike scooted them away. Her friends flanked her and ran interference for her.

Mike was a little put out that she had a new boyfriend but he was still as chatty with her as he had always been. And he still tried to save her from sport. That earned her thanks.

Jake stood next to her at the funerals. He held her hand; their fingers interlaced. He was her rock.

People told her that she didn't need to be there, but she was anyway. So was her father. They both felt guilty. Charlie because the murders happened on his watch and Bella because it was Edward's interest in her that had caused their deaths.

Thoughts were supposed to be secret. It didn't matter that these girls had disliked her. Everyone has thoughts that are not meant to be overheard. It was just first impressions. They never got the chance to change their minds.

 _She_ never got the chance to make them her friends.

Her mother, as they suspected, flipped out. Bella hadn't told Jake about it, yet.

She didn't know what to do and then Jake asked her out to La Push to meet the pack formally. It involved eating. Bella was starting to learn that a lot of the pack meetings centred on food.

* * *

"Explain it again," Bella ordered.

"Imprinting?" Jake checked.

"So it's like baby ducks?"

"No... although the life bond part is correct."

"You saw me and now you want to be with me forever?"

"Yeah." He sounded pleased, as if she had finally understood him.

"You are  _so_ fucking it up," said Quil.

"Why are  _they_ here again?" Bella asked.

"They're my pack."

"I know... but why?"

"Look," said Leah, "he loves you. You are the centre of his world. He will never do a single thing to hurt you EVER. Which is a problem 'coz imprinted wolves become complete pushovers for their imprint partners."

"Hey!" all the presumably imprinted wolves objected.

"It's true. Pushovers," she insisted. "Can't argue for things they know they should."

"Like what?" demanded the guy Bella now knew was Sam.

"Purple curtains, Sam." Leah leaned towards him with relish as she said it.

"What?"

"Purple," she repeated. "In the bedroom."

"Emily likes them."

"See!" Leah turned triumphantly to Bella. "And throw pillows... in  _lavender … with flowers_."

A couple of the guys winced.

"Pillows are useful," Sam argued, but Bella could tell that he had already lost.

"You're a man, Sam and your bedroom looks like a Barbie doll exploded."

"She's got a point," said Seth.

"Emily likes it and I want her to be happy."

Embry rolled his eyes.

"Ha!" crowed Leah.

Bella whispered to Jake, "I'm guessing Leah is not imprinted?'

"She can hear you," Jake said.

"Oh."

"Nope. I am not and it is never going to happen," Leah insisted.

Quil smirked at her.

"Yeah? That's what Jake used to say," Jared piped up.

"But you're happy about it?" Bella asked suddenly concerned that it might not be what Jake wanted if he had insisted it would not happen to him.

He wound his body around hers. "Ecstatic," he said as he kissed her neck. "What about you?"

She tried to think about it. Touching Jake had calmed her before she had known any of this supernatural stuff. She had held his hand within an hour of meeting him. "It's growing on me," she confessed.

"But?" he asked. He knew there was a 'but'.

"There's something I haven't told you. My mother rang."

"Ah."

"She had a fit and she wants me to go back to Arizona."

"Go home?" he asked.

"Huh. That's funny... I didn't call it home. I think that's the first time I've done that."

His face betrayed his emotions, just as Leah had suggested. "But you're safe, now."

"I know that and you know that but I can't tell my mother Edward is-" she searched for a word "-gone, without having to explain why we are hiding that death." She had killed him.

"The world thinks he is just missing," Jake said.

The pack seemed to be holding their breath.

"Yes, missing. And still out there somewhere, even though the world isn't sure he committed the murders. There is no proof and we can't say what happened."

"Most people put two and two together. And Charlie knows."

"Yes, he does."

The pack were hanging on her every word. Jake stood with his hands shoved in his jeans pockets. He had stepped away from her. And he wasn't touching her.

She noticed him do it and it actually hurt. She felt his absence.

Spinning to face the pack, she asked, "Can we just have a few minutes alone?"

They all looked at her as if they thought she was going to dump Jake, but they slowly drifted away. Jake didn't move.

It was only when they were alone that she turned to face him. He looked as if he was waiting for the axe to fall. Was she going to rip his heart out? His head was down and he was staring fixedly at the ground.

"Jake?"

She stepped in closer to him and tried to look up at his face. It pushed her back at an odd angle and she almost fell backwards.

He caught her.

"You knew I'd do that," he accused.

"You said you would not let me fall on my face." He had caught her on the stairs even though it exposed his secret.

"Or your ass," he said. "Clever."

"I am, you know. I get good grades at school." She touched his face with her palm. "Tell me what you were thinking that upset Edward so badly."

"No."

"Why not?"

"It doesn't matter, now."

She frowned at him. "It matters to me."

He shook his head.

"So, Leah is not entirely right," she said.

A wry grin. "She just thinks she is. And I am the alpha. Things might be different for me." He shrugged.

Silence.

His thumb was rubbing slowly over the side of her arm. She was completely aware of it.

"Are you going to leave me?" he asked in a choked whisper.

"I don't know," she whispered back. "My life has changed so drastically in less than a month. I need time to breathe."

"I'll w-"

She put her hand over his mouth. "I know what you are going to say; you'll wait for me." She paused. "But is that fair?"

"Bells, please stay - even if just tonight." He was begging. He held her now. Hard enough for it to hurt. "Please stay with me tonight?"

She knew what he was asking. They had been affectionate but had not gone the last step in their relationship. "If I stay with you... will that make it worse tomorrow?" she asked.

"No," he lied. He would take every moment he could get with her. Take everything he could get; even if she left him tomorrow. He'd always have this night. And he would try so hard to convince her to stay.

She pulled her phone out. "I will text Charlie. What about your dad?"

"He has his own place. It was easier to convert one of the holiday cabins than put ramps into the house. So we will have the house to ourselves." He tugged at her hand and they started walking towards his house.

"Okay." She nodded.

They had gone some distance when Jake asked, "Bells, can I ask you something personal?"

She looked doubtful. "Sure," she agreed.

"Are you a virgin?"

"No." And then she panicked that it might be important to this imprint stuff. "Does that make a difference?"

"Yeah." He stopped walking. "If you were a virgin we could probably only have sex once. If you're not, we can do it a heap of times." His voice dropped and the way he said it made her struggle to breathe.

"Oh," she finally managed to say. "That wasn't what I meant." She shifted and squirmed.

"Bells?" he checked. "You did want to have sex?"

He always asked her. He asked before he touched her. He even apologised for doing it without asking. "You said... before we started cooking enchiladas, that if we started, we were not going to stop."

"Yeah, I did say that." He said a lot of other stuff too, about the taste of her being all over him. "That's why we need all night."

"All night," she repeated.

She felt an irrational flare of annoyance that some other person had had sex with him.  _He was hers._

She blinked. This imprint stuff might well go both ways. Maybe Leah didn't know that. She had no reason to think like this, and even less to be jealous if she went back to Arizona and Jake moved on with someone else; if he could even do that. Irrational as it was, it was how she felt right now.

Intrigued by the flood of emotions across her face, he brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers. "What's the matter?"

Wanting to shake her head, but also not wanting to move away from his hand, she blinked and leaned into him. "Sorry. That was weird."

He still looked doubtful. She supposed that she hadn't actually answered him.

"I'd love to spend the night with you, Jacob Black."


	10. Chapter 10

**Offerings chapter 10**

_Disclaimer: the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer - this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute that, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods._

_Thanks to BanSidhe [ruadh sidhe] and Feebes86 for betaing and pre-reading and Goldengirl2707 for helping me out._

* * *

Jake could have sworn that she looked jealous. Even just for a moment. That was interesting. He knew why she was hesitant or at least he could think of a few things on the downside for her.

She was still in high school and he was offering her a lifetime bond. If she wasn't a virgin, then she might have dated but she was still very young. He wasn't a normal guy; he spent several hours a day in fur and in the weirdest way. Any kids they had, if he could allow himself to think that far ahead, would be the same way. Furred.

She had had a rough few days and he was determined to be the best part of that.

He'd do whatever it took to get her to stay. She hadn't decided yet. He convinced himself of that.

He wouldn't dump the dead bodies of people who had insulted her in her yard but if she wanted to cuddle all night, he'd do that. If she wanted him to love her all night, he'd do that, too.

She still hadn't made up her mind.

He thought he might die if she left him and he so desperately needed her to stay. He wasn't even sure that he could survive his imprint leaving; but he wasn't going to make that decision for her, either.

It was her choice.

* * *

He held the door open for her.

"Not locked?"

"Not on the rez, at least not any more."

"So the pack police La Push as well?"

"Did you want to see our crime stats?" he asked with a glint in his eye.

"Oh... gosh. I'm sorry. I feel really nervous."

He smiled at her. "You don't have to be nervous. I'll look after you."

Taking a deep breath, she looked around his home. They were standing in the kitchen. All the signs of kids growing up in the home were still there - old school craft projects, and a few framed photos of award presentation days. It looked as if the twins had won more awards than Jake.

He was watching her. "Did you want to go somewhere else?"

"No, this is fine."

Silence.

She fidgeted with her hands.

"We don't have to do anything," he suggested. "We can think of something else."

"What? Like play board games?"

He chuckled. "Monopoly is right out. That game destroys relationships."

She laughed.

He continued, "Once, Quil hid cash under the board and Embry was furious when he found out. They wouldn't talk to each other for a week."

"A week?" she checked. "Woah."

"Hey, for those two that was a lifetime." He shuffled closer to her. "I know you have a lot of things on your mind right now. We can just make out."

"That does sound better than Monopoly." She closed the gap between them and pressed her forehead against his chest. Her arms crept around his waist.

He felt her breathe better; more deeply and more evenly. Hoisting her up, he sat her on the kitchen counter, then stepped between her legs.

"You remember?" he asked.

A breathy sigh. "Yes."

"So?"

A pause, and then she understood. "Jake?... kiss me."

He did. As the kiss ended, he dragged his face up a little against hers. She chased him; sitting straighter and leaning onto him. Her arms around his neck. She wrapped her legs around his waist and tried to grind herself against him.

"Mmm," he hummed. Then he just picked her up and started walking to his room.

She couldn't resist checking it out. It looked as if he had tried to clean up. There was a mound of stuff in the corner covered with a blanket. He turned her away from it. But the sheets on the bed looked fresh.

"Clean sheets?"

"Nothing but the best for you."

She kissed him as a reward. "I'm on the pill," she whispered to him.

"We can use condoms if you want, but wolves are disease free."

They tried to undress, fighting over clothes in their eagerness to be naked together. "Let me," he told her as his hands covered hers and stilled them. "We can go slow. We've got all night."

"Yes," she agreed.

"Close your eyes."

He undressed her; taking exquisite care to caress what felt like every inch of her skin. He touched places that she didn't know were erogenous zones. He stroked her skin with his fingers and brushed across it with his lips until she was already wet just from that. Nobody had touched her like this before. Maybe it was the failings of her previous lovers or maybe it was just Jake. He was so gentle for such a large man. And one that she knew was so freakishly strong that he could probably bench press a car.

She stood there and he worshiped her. Each time she tried to hurry him or grab at him, he would tsk at her and move her hands away. In the end, she had to let him do what he wanted to do. Once he had completely explored her body he lay her down on her back and used his mouth, his lips and his tongue to cover the same ground. She was begging before he finally sank inside her. Both were so excited, it only took less than a dozen strokes before he groaned and he lost it.

"I'm sorry," he whispered to her. "It's just… I was so excited."

Of course. She was his imprint. The person he had waited for since he was sixteen. "Me too." She hugged him hard. "You said we've got all night."

It didn't take them long to try again.

* * *

He asked constantly: is this okay, does that hurt, does she like this, and she wondered if that was what he always does in bed, or if it is just for  _her_? She allowed herself to imagine a future where they are so used to loving each other that he didn't have to ask permission any more.

She was on hands and knees. Her arms trembling and her body surrounded by the heat that was Jacob Black. Palms on the bed next to hers, arms long enough to kneel over her without flattening her into the mattress. She was so wet, so hot, so excited.

She tried to tell herself that she still hadn't decided to stay with him. But the more he touched her, the more she felt him moving inside her, the more she cannot imagine a world where this was not an option for her.

This didn't feel like normal sex. Besides the fact that Jake really knew what he was doing, every time he touched her she could  _feel_  it.

Bella was starting to think that if her father called her Bells again, she would blush. That name was now indelibly linked with Jake's husky voice whispering in her ear as he fucked her. Not that he was actually inside her right now. His hot hard cock was rubbing between her legs and just that was making her shiver. As she orgasmed, her arms failed and she fell face first onto the mattress.

"Bells?" he asked.

"Keep going… oh, god, please keep going."

He took her at her word, holding her at the hips with both hands and shunting her back onto him. When she started to pant loudly, a muscled arm reached around her chest and hauled her up off the mattress so that her back was up against his chest. With his mouth working at her neck and her nails sunk into his arm they finished together.

* * *

Her phone rang just before dawn.

"Mom?" She checked the number but she still sounded groggy from lack of sleep.

"Sweetie? I know it's so early there and I am sorry but I just wanted to tell you-"

"Is Phil okay?" Bella interrupted.

"That's it! A new surgeon showed up," she babbled. "He has limited time, but he said he heard about Phil's case and he wanted to help, but he had to operate  _today_ ; as early as possible. That's what I am calling to tell you."

Jake shifted on the bed. She knew he could hear everything. He raised an eyebrow at her.

She understood. It sounded suspicious.

"What is this surgeon's name?"

"Doctor Cullen."

Bella panicked. "NO, Mom!"

"Oh, I know he's new, but he said there was a thing called an Alice Test and I've never heard of it before, but he insisted that if he did the surgery today that Phil would be okay." Renee's voice cracked and Bell knew that she was crying; probably with relief.

That message was just for her. Alice could see Phil's future. He was away from the wolves.

She took a deep breath. "Don't cry, Mom. That's great news. Of course you should do it. You let me know how the surgery goes."

She hung up the phone and put it back on the bedside table.

Jake was looking at her.

She didn't know how to interpret the look on his face. "She's never wrong? She knows?"

"Alice? I guess. She must be able to see him."

"She was wrong about Edward."

"True, but Carlisle's vampire senses make him an extraordinary surgeon. He can see things others can't."

"Their senses are that good?"

"Some are better than mine." He paused. "Are they trying to apologise? For Edward?"

"Maybe. But I don't know how I feel about them offering without asking  _me_ first."

"Carlisle might have suggested that your mother phone you. That Alice line was only for you."

"Yes."

"They aren't human and they are hundreds of years old. I reckon they have forgotten how to be people."

"That might be true." He had more experience with vampires than she did.

"Carlisle keeps his word. He kept the treaty with the tribe. And they left without hurting anyone else."

Fiddling with her phone she noticed the battery was running down. She waved it at Jake. "Do you have a charger that will fit? I don't want the battery to run out."

"You could text her the landline number for here," he suggested artfully.

He was up to something.

"And then I would have to stay longer?" she checked.

"And I wouldn't have to get out of bed and run to Embry's house to get the cable."

She didn't want him to get out of bed. "You drive a hard bargain, Jacob Black."

Her hands were already touching him.

"That's not all I've got that's hard," he whispered to her.

She chuckled. "Again?"

"Yes, please." He shifted onto his back and encouraged her to climb onto his body. "If you are staying for a little bit longer."

"I still haven't decided," she argued.

"I know. But maybe things have changed? If Phil survives the operation okay?"

She didn't look like a woman who was leaving. He never thought he would have to thank the Cullens for that; but he'd do that, too, if she'd stay with him forever.

She sent the text as he recited the number for her.

Then she straddled him, feeling how solid he was for herself. "That is hard."

"Uh, huh."

Hovering above him, she reached under her body and positioned him. She watched as his eyes closed.

She stopped with the sensitive bell shaped head just touching her entrance.

She leaned down and she whispered, "Tell me what you showed Edward."

"Oh, fuck, Bells. No." He clutched the headboard with his hands rather than grab her.

"Tell me," she insisted.

"No."

Her leg muscles trembled from the pose, but she lifted up away from him. She ached everywhere after a night with him.

"Oh, no... please, Bells."

"Jake..."

"Fine... fine." The words tumbled together as he hurried the explanation, the faster to get inside her. "I showed him this," he said.

"This?"

"Us. Fucking. In every possible position I could think of. Every act. What I wanted to do to you in the kitchen.. everything."

"What freaked him out? There was one thing that broke his concentration." She gave a little dip down as a reward and he groaned as he got closer to his desire.

"Doesn't matter; I'll never do it."

She was intrigued now. "Never do what?" Another dip. "Tell me!"

"Fuck!" He groaned. The head board creaked ominously. "I'll never come on your face." He almost shouted it.

She dropped down onto him and he let out a noise that part of her decided she needed to hear again. It hurt for a few seconds, but he was so hot it was like a balm.

"That was what pushed him over the edge?" she checked.

"Oh... yeah."

She wasn't sure if he was groaning an agreement or just groaning.

"You can hold me, now."

His fingers looked white.

"Before you break the bed," she added.

"Thank the gods," Jake said as he grabbed her and shifted her body. He just moved her where he wanted her to go and she went with it. She was panting within minutes.

"He said..." she puffed out. "...that I... wouldn't... oh, God... do... that."

"Not yours," Jake grunted out.

She wasn't' sure what he meant. "He couldn't... read my ...mind. He didn't... know... me. I might let you..."

"Oh, fuck, Bells."

He lost it. He knew she was saying more than the actual words she spoke. She wasn't going to leave him. She knew that if they trusted Alice, that her stepfather would survive and that she could stay.

In Forks.

With  _ **him**_.

He wanted to howl out his emotions but he held it in and he held her. As close to him as he could get. Their bodies sliding against each other and her: fully and completely inside his heart. "Mine," he growled out between gritted teeth.

"Yours," she confirmed.

* * *

They shifted around to lie on their sides. Staring at each other.

"You are not so tall when you are lying down."

"I'll remember that," he threatened.

"If I ever want to have a fight with you I will have to stand on a chair."

"Sure, sure. And I will be laughing so hard, the fight will be over before it starts."

He smiled. He knew she was staying.


	11. Chapter 11

**Offerings chapter 11**

_Disclaimer: the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer - this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute that, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods._

_Thanks to BanSidhe [ruadh sidhe] and Feebes86 for betaing and pre-reading and Goldengirl2707 for helping me out._

* * *

Jake was out cold. An occasional snort escaped from his slumbering form. Tired as she was, Bella could not fall asleep. She lay there staring at nothing.

Jake was lying on his stomach, his face turned towards her. He shifted and flung his arm across her body. She felt it as a heavy, warm weight. Waiting for the call from her mother was killing her. Perhaps she should just get out of bed and wait somewhere else? Pace by the phone or something? The large hand locked around her as if he knew she was thinking of escaping. Could he know what she was thinking?

She patted his arm to reassure him she was there.

She crossed her fingers for Phil. He would pull through this, Alice had seen it. And if he did, then her mother wouldn't need her and she could stay with the guy who  _did_  need her. She had already half made her mind up but she just needed that phone call.

The way the pack had looked at her and Leah's whine about imprints had told her that they were a lot more than just a partner chosen by the wolf gods.

She was smart enough to work that out. And then she thought of another issue. She groaned aloud.

"What?" Jake asked, instantly awake.

"Nothing."

"You worry loudly."

"Yeah... Charlie."

A crease of his brow. "He's okay about us."

"No, when he hears about Carlisle showing up in Arizona."

"Oh... shit."

"He will freak when he hears that they are near Renee."

"He can't tell her what they are."

"I know." A pause. "This is the kind of thing you dealt with all the time, isn't it?"

"Yeah." He rolled onto his side and hauled her in closer to him. "Not anymore."

"They've left." She tried to be comforting.

"Yep. Gone."

She sighed.

"What now?"

"You'll think I'm crazy."

"Probably, but tell me anyway."

"It feels kind of wrong to be happy when-" She stopped.

"Other people are dead."

"Yeah." Her voice was tiny.

He shifted his body and slid an arm under her head to hold her closer to him. "I understand. They call it survivor guilt."

"Oh."

"Cops have to deal with it sometimes."

A nod.

His other hand patted her on the hip.

"My mom died and my dad has been ill for a while."

She waited for him to make his point.

"I don't know how long I will get with Dad, or what could happen, so a long time ago I learned not to stress about the bad stuff. We've had some pretty lean years and some big medical bills, but we've got through it."

"I wish that would rub off on me. I worry about things."

"I am starting to get that." He hugged her. "But you said you were happy?"

She nodded.

"Then hold onto that."

"I am," she whispered, hugging him hard and sniffing.

"Oh, no. Did I make you cry?"

"I'm so happy," she wailed.

"Oh, Bells." He crushed her against him, peppering her with kisses.

His stomach growled so loudly, they both heard it and laughed.

"Breakfast," he said.

* * *

The phone rang as they were eating. She looked panicked.

"Do you want me to answer it?"

And then she would have to explain who Jake was and why she was there. "Ah... no." She grabbed it.

"He's in post-op. It all looks good," Renee squealed.

"That's brilliant, Mom. I'm so glad."

 _See_ , Jake mouthed at her.

"Can you tell Charlie for me? My phone is about to die. I've lost the charger again." Her mother joked that she repelled technology.

"Sure thing, Mom. Tell Phil that I love him."

She hung up and threw herself at her wolf boy. "I can stay."

"You can stay," he agreed. "Let's go back to bed to celebrate."

* * *

Billy Black had been Charlie Swan's best friend for a very long time and they had been through some big things together like Renee leaving him and taking his daughter with her when Bella was barely a year old, and like Sarah dying in a car crash when Jake was about ten.

If you had asked him a month ago, he would have said that they didn't have any secrets between them. He might have said that, but he would have known as he said it, that it wasn't entirely true. As he had told Jake, he had noted the odd behavior of his best friend when the Cullens came to town.

And then a year or so later, he had noted the physical changes in Jake and the others.

He was happy for the tribe to keep its secrets but he would never have thought about them being shapeshifters. That was the stuff of fantasy novels.

Like vampires.

He and Billy had talked about it, if you could call Charlie saying, 'so werewolves?' and Billy replying, 'yep, vampires' and that was pretty much that.

He kept finding himself staring into space and wondering how many more of the unsolved murders in the region could be attributed to vampires. There were quite a few deaths from exsanguination and a couple of hiker killings that were put down to animal attacks. He was rethinking a lot of things lately even if he did have to admit that Carlisle Cullen might have saved Phil's life.

"Jake?"

"Chief?"

Jake had his keys in his hands as if he was about to head out.

Charlie pointed at his screen. "What about these ones?"

Jake shut the door behind him before reading the entries. "The pack took care of those."

"Huh."

"The hikers were killed by a solitary nomadic vamp."

"They don't always live in families, then?"

"Covens, they call it. Sometimes they pair up but it is rare to have a larger group. There are some Cullen friends with the same diet up in Alaska."

"Same diet?"

"They prefer their men alive and in their beds."

"Huh?"

"They are... what do you call it? They feed off sex?"

Charlie imagined all kinds of bad B grade movie titles.

"Succubus," Jake remembered.

"Right." Charlie cleared his throat.

"Bells rang, the truck won't start."

"Is she by herself?" School was finished for the day. Since the deaths of her fellow students, Charlie had got very nervous about his daughter waiting anywhere alone.

"Angela stayed with her. Can I go collect her?"

"Sure. She hates me picking her up in the squad car."

Jake grinned. "Yeah, but she'll forgive me," he said before he hurried off.

"Bet she does, too," said Charlie to himself.

* * *

Angela and Bella were sitting on the steps near the parking lot when they saw the sheriff's car pull up. Jake jogged over to them, picked Bella up, swung her around, then crushed her to his chest in a massive hug before kissing her soundly enough to make her knees wobble when he finally put her down.

It was the kind of greeting you would expect after months of separation.

"Gah," said Angela, as she stood, brushed dust from her butt and found her car keys.

"You saw me yesterday," said Bella, grinning like a fool.

"I know but that was yesterday!" He said it as if yesterday was an age past.

"Twins," said Angela waving her keys.

"Thanks for waiting with her."

"I know she panics about being alone."

"Hey! She is getting much better at that, thank you."

They watched Angela drive off.

"Did Charlie sign you off?"

"Technically, no, but I don't think he expects to see me back again today. My shift would have finished in half an hour."

She leaned against him. "So we have time?" she hinted.

"You don't have to study?"

She pouted dramatically.

He chuckled. "It's the uniform, isn't it?"

"It is," she agreed. "It is what you were wearing the first time I saw you."

"Grown up," he added.

"I keep telling you, I barely remember you as a kid."

He glanced at the red truck. "What's wrong with the truck?"

"It hates me."

"It does not." He gave her a significant look. "If I try it, will it start?"

She looked guilty. "Maybe," she confessed.

He kissed her, holding her face in his hands. "I would have come to pick you up, if you had asked."

A shrug. "I might have had to wait another half hour."

He laughed with delight.

That laugh made her feel warm inside. She utterly adored him and if she told him that every hour of every day it would still not be enough. She looked at him; tall and strong and her gorgeous supernatural protector. "I love you, Jake."

"Quick..." He scooped her up, bag and all, and started running for the car. She giggled.

"We'll be doing it in the parking lot otherwise," he added.

She clung to him and whispered in his ear what they would be doing when they got back to her place.

They made it inside the front door but only just. Her obvious desire for him got him twice as excited; knowing she was right there with him. Knowing that she had engineered him to collect her early so that they could be doing this. She wanted him just as much as he wanted her.

He was pushed up behind her as she unlocked the door, lips working at her neck.

"I love it when you do that." She moaned.

"The door, Bells."

"I'm... oh... trying... oooh."

When she got the door open, he just pushed her from behind, lifting her slightly with his hands under the back of her thighs. He kicked the door shut behind him with one foot and they kind of hopped, shuffled and eventually fell over the arm of the couch. Jake's groin pressed against her ass and they both groaned.

"Here... here... do it here," she muttered as she started toeing off her shoes.

He didn't ask again but he had to check that she was ready. While she was getting her shoes off he was undoing her jeans. Shoving them down her hips and sliding his hand between her legs. "Jeez, Bells." He stroked her with hand as he undid his fly with the other. And then he was inside her.

"Yesss!" she shouted.

"So good," he agreed.

She thrust herself back at him and he grabbed her at the hips to hold her in place. Her jeans were hanging around her knees and he was still in his uniform. Sunk inside her he started to push her top up her back. "Take it off," he ordered.

She wriggled and yanked it over her hair.

He watched the curve of her back and the way she shivered against him, but he wanted more. He stood on her jeans with one foot and lifted her out of them.

Now she was naked and he was not; the reversal made it more exciting. It was usually him who was inadequately dressed.

"Oooh Deputy Black," she moaned.

He chuckled.

* * *

When Charlie got home the house was clean and smelt like febreeze, Jake's uniform was in the wash and Bella was cooking dinner with wet hair after a shower.

"Where's Jake?" He knew he wouldn't be far away.

"Popped up to school to collect the truck."

He peered into the pot on the stove. There was enough for a dozen people. "He staying for dinner?"

"Yes."

"How long are we going to be feeding that boy?" His grocery bill had more than doubled.

She grabbed him a beer from the fridge. "You know the answer to that question," she chided.

"Long time, eh?"

"I reckon."

They smiled at each other.

Charlie nodded. "Good."

~~~The End~~

**AN: My first Jake/Bells longer than a one shot. Still not as long as some others. No idea what it is, but I find it hard to write Jake and Bella. I can write him with others, and I can write her with others like Paul, as easily as a bad boy sliding off a motorbike, but this was on my challenge list so ... tick that box as done, Jakejunkie.**

**Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed. I did see people's comments about Alice or Rose going feral in revenge, but it felt out of character to me so I let Carlisle apologise in his own way.**

**This story, short as it is, pushed me over the 1.5 million words posted on fanfic. How cool is that?**


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